HEAR works to place equality and human rights issues at the heart of the work of London's voluntary and community sector (VCS). We do this by acting as a strong pan-equalities voice and source of knowledge and expertise on issues impacting on the VCS.

We aim to:

• Bring together distinct equality sectors, and others that are committed to equality, to speak with one voice on issues of the voluntary and community sector and of relevance to all equality sectors. 
• Raise the profile of equality organisations, in particular their unique and vital role in creating lasting solutions to inequality, and place them and equality issues at the heart of London's voluntary and community sector.  
• Enable equality organisations, and others that are committed to equality, to network, learn from each other, collaborate and work in partnership, in order to improve the support available to frontline equality organisations.
  
• Share our equalities expertise with mainstream infrastructure organisations, to support them in ensuring their services reach and benefit equality organisations.
• Highlight gaps in and solutions to inadequate specialist support for equality organisations and act as a mechanism through which sectors lacking insufficient support can influence relevant policy. 

Background

HEAR was originally set up in 2005 as a sub-group of the ChangeUp London Regional Consortium to feed the views and expertise of equality organisations into the development of infrastructure support for London's voluntary and community sector. We now also act as a VCS advisory group to the Equality and Human Rights Commission's (EHRC) London team.

HEAR's work is underpinned by the belief that those with direct experience of inequality and discrimination are best placed to develop strategies to achieve equality.

HEAR demonstrates its belief that more can be achieved through co-operation and partnership working, not only by bringing organisations and people together, but also by working closely with others ourselves. HEAR is, for example, a member of EREN, a network of English regional equality networks, The National Equality Partnership's Reference Group, the British Institute of Human Rights' Principles to Practice Project Advisory Group, the London Empowerment Partnership and many more.

HEAR is currently hosted by the Women’s Resource Centre (WRC), and chaired by Vivienne Hayes, Women's Resource Centre.

Want to find out more?

Contact Sarah on sarah@wrc.org.uk or 020 7324 3053.

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