A Values Framework based on Human Rights

We base our on framework on Human Rights Values as these are universal, important to people personally and offer a strong guide to living. Research shows that Human Rights values are an effective way to aticulate and embed the values you think are important.  In short:

• • Strong values are essential for any organisation as the bedrock of any organisation's culture.
  • Strong values add to the potential for success of any programme or strategy.
  • Strong values are universally accepted and personally important.
  • Stong values only work when people know about those values, work in an environment in which those values are present and feel confident to share those values with others
  • Values need to be clearly defined and consistently applied in all aspects of an organisation's work.

 We offer to support orgnisations build stong and sustainable values frameworks for developing their culture, as part of strategies and programmes for change. The size of the strategy or programme is not important, but it's sustained success is.

 Areas we can work in include:

• • • Well-being
    • Social media and Internet Safety
    • Global learning
    • Organisational values
    • School improvement
    • Community

Our Rights Based Approach

Human Rights Education (HRE) is a UN supported programme.  It is defined as ‘learning about rights, learning through rights and working for rights’.  You need to know what rights are, but you can only do so by learning through those rights (‘practice what you preach’).  An individual can’t learn about respect, if not treated respectfully.  For Rights to mean something, they have to be practiced in the everyday lives of each of us.  We must give respect, treat others equally, protect the vulnerable; we act towards others they way we want ourselves to be treated.

This is the rights based approach at it’s simplest, and this works effectively for other values based approaches.  It's ABOUT… THROUGH… FOR…

Many organisations promote using values as a means of organisational change and development.  Effective change is most sustainably delivered through developing organisational culture.  As management guru Peter Drucker memorably said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

So which values?  Every company, school, college or organisation will have it’s own priorities and will have a set of generic values which they aim to realise.  However, many such agreed values are usually ill-defined and vague.  How does an organisation that has ‘fairness’ as one of its values, actually define what  ‘fairness’ is? RealisingRights believes that Human Rights have evolved as a values framework which can help organisations more adequately define their values.

“Human Rights? Isn’t that all about Europe, criminals and terrorists?”  Well that’s the media’s view, but we go back to the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the twentieth century’s most prominent proponents of Human Rights:  "Where, after all do universal human rights begin?  In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.  Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.  Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination........" 

Human Rights values are essentially personal and about ourselves, our families and our neighbours, which make them an excellent basis for organisations wanting a better and more sustainable culture.   For that culture to develop, it has to encapsulate three small words: ABOUT…THROUGH…FOR...