CHAPTER
Learning More About Our Rights
Legal rights in social enterprise module
Our Learning Journey
We can always learn more about our legal rights and how to better realise them in our organisations and rural communities. Whether we are emerging, building or experienced in our journey and everyday practice.
One of the best ways to learn more about the work people are doing, whether rights are working in reality and how can improve them is to talk to people. For example, joining networks like the Rural Social Enterprise Hub network to hear about what social enterprises are working on, what problems are being identified and how we can work together.
Here are some examples of where you can learn more about legal rights.
Would you like to suggest a resource? Leave us a comment in the feedback section.
Sources of Further Information, Learning and Training
- The Third Sector Human Rights and Equalities project are developing resources, training and networks for the third sector in Scotland
- There are good glossaries of legal terms in plain language including the Equally Ours’ toolkit glossary and the Campaign for Plain English’s legal A-Z
- The UN has developed this website-based guide for businesses about ‘Doing business with respect for human rights’ Doing business with respect for human rights (businessrespecthumanrights.org) for all staff beyond core corporate social responsibility roles including procurement, public affairs and sales which includes case studies
- The UN also created this longer, more detailed interpretative guide for businesses about ‘The corporate responsibility to respect human rights’ PUB.12.2_En.pdf (ohchr.org) (PDF) which includes a glossary, series of questions per recommendation and references a series of useful further reading and guides
- The UN has also designed an online certificated learning module ‘Business and Human Rights: How companies can operationalize the UN Guiding Principles’ United Nations Global Compact Academy (unglobalcompact.org) which takes 2 hours to complete. It is available in French, Spanish and Portuguese
Sources of News
- EachOther is a UK-focused charity using independent journalism, storytelling and filmmaking to put the human into human rights. As well as new stories they have infographics about human rights (Everything you need to know about human rights | EachOther) and legal cases that changed the world (50 Human Rights Cases That Transformed Britain | EachOther)
- The British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) send out a weekly human rights newsletter
Sources of Inspiration and Networking
- There are lots of networks of organisations working on rights, including the Human Rights Consortium Scotland, and the Human Rights Consortium in Northern Ireland which you can join
- BIHR have a page collecting stories about how rights change lives (Human Rights Change Lives | British Institute of Human Rights (bihr.org.uk) and lead to organisational transformation (Human Rights Transforming Organisations | British Institute of Human Rights (bihr.org.uk)
Reflection Questions
- What would you like to learn more about?
- What does your organisation need to learn more about? And how will you action this?
- Have you learned anything new about your learning style by interacting with this module?
- How will you share the themes and your learning from this module?
- How can you be a rights champion in your social enterprise or rural community?
- What are the challenges of communicating rights in your context?
