Our Work

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What We Do

For over 20 years, Partners for Dignity & Rights has collaborated with grassroots organizations to innovate worker- and community-led solutions to protect human rights, expand democracy and public goods, and hold corporations accountable for exploitation and abuse in global supply chains.
The most impactful, transformative approaches are shaped and led by those who are the most impacted. Our work with movement partners is rooted in principles of racial equity and human rights as we work together to make meaningful change in people’s lives today and win long-term structural change for tomorrow.

  • Our education justice work anchors the Dignity in Schools Campaign, which has defined the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline as one of the biggest threats to Black and Brown youth’s access to education and fought to end school pushout.
  • Our co-governance work has documented and helped seed growing grassroots-led visions for collaborative governance and shared decision-making power over schools, land, housing, and policy.
  • Our worker rights work has supported the development of innovative, effective programs to enforce low-wage workers’ rights and redefine corporate accountability.

The struggle for a just world where everyone is treated with dignity and all people can thrive continues – join us as we tackle some of the most critical human rights issues of our time.

Initiatives

Across our areas of work, Partners for Dignity & Rights strategizes to:


  • Build movements and models that center human rights for a world where all people can thrive;
  • Block the biggest threats to human rights through effective campaigns that follow the money and center the voices of those most impacted;
  • Bridge movements for change and facilitate learning through communities of practice, coalition building, research, and actionable analysis.

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A New Social Contract

All of us as individuals, communities and a society should have fundamental rights to education, health care, housing, work with dignity and the other foundations of a decent life. But right now, all too many of us are denied those …
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Dignity in Schools

Partners for Dignity & Rights works with youth, parents, educators and advocates to transform our public school systems to end school pushout and create learning environments that protect the human right to dignity and support the full academic, social and …
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Land and Housing

Partners for Dignity & Rights collaborates with community organizations and advocates for the right to participatory development that seeks affordable, secure and quality housing, jobs with dignity, healthy and sustainable communities. We work to advance models that ensure community control …
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Low Wage Workers

Partners for Dignity and Rights works with the worker center movement to build the power and participation of workers to enforce their right to work with dignity. So long as retaliation, intimidation, and discrimination are the standard way of doing business, low wage workers are stripped of any power to determine their conditions of work and, by extension, the conditions of their lives and that of their families.