Age UK’s “Our Rights Our Voices” project aims to promote awareness and understanding of how human rights are relevant for older people. Human rights are universal and belong to everyone. They are about treating people with equality and dignity and are relevant to all of us in our day-to-day lives.
The 3-year Our Rights Our Voices project, funded by Comic Relief, began formally in June 2012 and finished in July 2015. During this time, Age UK worked with 8 older people’s forums across England to:
- raise awareness and understanding of our rights
- find practical ways to use human rights locally to improve older people’s daily lives.
Each of the 8 forums have recruited and trained 10 volunteers to become human rights ambassadors, who have put their knowledge into practice. Some have used human rights to campaign on local issues, like challenging cuts to local transport or changes to local parking arrangements. While others have hosted presentations and conferences to increase older people’s understanding of how their rights are relevant to them.
As part of the project, Age UK have produced a human rights toolkit. This toolkit breaks down and explains human rights legislation as well as using up to date case studies of how people have used these rights in reality. The toolkit also provides practical ideas and tools for you to use a human rights approach and includes practical examples from some of the older people involved in the project.
