Interns Ahoy!

Friday  26 April 2013

NEW VACANCY: Internships x 2  (London Office and Cardiff office)

 Interns ahoy! We need two interns, one based in Cardiff and one based in London. These positions are to support Kazuri staff and volunteers with the plethora of activities we are engaged in and we have coming up including our women in prison  sustainable housing program

our women's prison councils pilot 

and our event in  Parliament to mark the publication of our report  "Captors or Carers" questioning the role of  private sector security companies delivering housing for vulnerable women seeking asylum in June, hosted by three notable MPs.

Job title: 2 x Interns,  social justice and media  / policy

Location: London and Cardiff

Salary: Voluntary, although reasonable travel expenses are reimbursed

Hours: 4-5 days a week for 8-12 weeks (flexible)

Context

Our Mission: Kazuri is founded on the ethos that sustainable housing is  a basic human right, from which a traumatised woman can rebuild shattered social bonds and start to put some order into a chaotic lifestyle. We deploy the successful model known as Housing First, you house the person safely and sustainably then you build the bespoke  services around her that she needs.

 Kazuri gives a voice to the most marginalized in our society, women who have suffered trauma through domestic violence, incarceration or  as a result of multiple exclusion and by campaigning at the highest levels, we seek to challenge policy where it is unfairly biased against women and ex offenders. Our mission is to mainstream the  offender's resettlement experience, show the larger community that we are all responsible for successful reintegration,  so  she can embark upon her personal journey towards desistance.

 Why we’re effective:  Kazuri is effective because  it is founded on the principles of justice and human rights, fair access to services and sustainability  ours is not a model which engenders dependency but one which empowers  independence. We ask our service users to undertake a minimum of 5 hours of volunteering in the community with a social enterprise or charity to  strengthen their own community bonds.

Kazuri is a social enterprise founded by former offender Farah Damji, whose own experiences of the criminal justice system inform her approach to transforming justice and the experiences of women in prison.  A notable writer and journalist, Farah founded Kazuri to provide housing in the private rented sector for women leaving prison or refuges.  Kazuri  works in successful partnerships with third sector and private enterprise, for   innovative solutions  to entrenched problems: disrupt, challenge, transform. Today, Kazuri is supported by government departments, members of parliament and leading academics and thinkers, a testament to the resilience of the model and our "STICKABILITY" in a commissioning  landscape which has become  a byword for failed policy and dogmatic approaches which do not reduce reoffending rates .


Our impact:  Kazuri offers a model of support through resilience training, volunteering and engaging with the mainstream, our service users and tenants are expected to become stakeholders in society, thereby being part of the solution and no longer seen as the problem. Our report to the Justice Committee, "Sex in the System" was praised by MPs, policy makers and grass roots practitioners who commended the practical policy framework advocated by the leading thinkers such as Flo Krause, Julia Gibby and Imran Khan  who contributed to the  report. These  human rights practitioners  challenge injustice daily and have been instrumental in bringing about changes in prison reform and the police, and  understand first hand how law affects women. The report was also informed by a survey of 25 serving women prisoners who provided a very current snapshot of the state of the estate.


Person Specification 
We require two  female interns, with a passion for policy and change, who can  thinking on her feet and laterally.  You'll need compelling research skills, a flair for writing and the ability to be proactive and work in a brilliant, challenging, changing and inspiring environment.  We are looking for 2 high caliber graduates, ideally in Politics, Social Sciences  or Criminology, with excellent IT skills and a genuine interest in criminal justice and social policy to help with the burgeoning growth of this exciting and innovative organisation.

Key Responsibilities
• Communications, including PR, website maintenance and social media
• Research background material for projects
• Assist with funding applications
• Keep Kazuri  updated on relevant activity in Government, Whitehall, Think Tanks and the Third Sector in the media
• Assist in creating, updating and maintaining office systems
• Administrative duties, including some diary management and travel booking

What this role can offer 
• Invaluable experience working within a   social enterprise at the heart of reform in the criminal justice sector
• A chance to develop existing skills and gain new ones
• Work experience to add to your CV
• Support from a motivated and enthusiastic team

Interview & Start dates

Interviews will be on a rolling basis from 13 May  2013.
Closing date for applications is 30 May 2013, but note that we may appoint before the closing date.

Start date will be mid to late May 2013.To apply
Please send a CV and covering letter to Dianne Ramsay at info@kazuri.org.uk

Because this is a role  working on policy and with vulnerable women, we would ideally like to find two women candidates, as it fits our gendered approach to tackling inequality in the workplace.

Dear Mrs Home Secretary, please stop telling racist lies.

Conservative catflap: the truth behind Maya and the deportation row

Spat between two Conservative cabinet ministers rests on a judge's light-hearted remark

Theresa May Home Secretary, winging it. bad hair dye day

via @Guardian

An immigration judge's light-hearted remark about a cat no longer having to fear adapting to Bolivian mice lies behind the outlandish Conservative party conference claim by home secretary Theresa May. Her assertion that a Bolivian student was an illegal immigrant who could not be deported because he had a pet cat – called Maya – was one of three examples she cited as justifying her new drive to prevent human rights protection for family life blocking deportations.
The three examples were drawn from a Sunday Telegraph article in June which detailed 102 cases last year in which article 8 of the European convention on human rights – the right to family life – was cited as a reason for stopping the deportation of illegal migrants and foreign criminals. The other two cases involved a violent drug dealer, whose daughter lived in Britain, and a robber who was not deported because he had a British girlfriend. The paper was careful in its report to say the cat was only part of the reason that stopped the Bolivian student's deportation. May's downfall was caused by her failure to make such a qualification; she pinned the whole thing on the cat.
But the judgment delivered by senior immigration judge Gleeson on 10 December 2008 makes clear that while the cat featured in the case, it was actually a dispute about an article 8 rule then in force that said if someone was settled in Britain with an unmarried partner for more than two years without enforcement action, then they had an automatic right to stay.
Ronan Toal, the barrister in the case, told the Guardian that it wasn't even about a deportation but an application to stay in Britain and the cat had only been mentioned in passing as evidence of the long-term relationship.
"It's totally cynical. It's specious to rely on a completely distorted and inaccurate account of one decision of one tribunal. If that's the best they can do, then that just reveals the poverty of their thinking about human rights in general and article 8 in particular,'' he said.
The judgment makes clear that the joint ownership of the cat was not the crucial factor in allowing the appeal.
The original judgment does not name the cat. Indeed, it goes as far as to omit the cat's name, which led the Sun to print a picture of a cat with its eyes blacked out when it reported the story. It appears that Judge Gleeson's throw-away line at the end of his judgment "that the cat need no longer fear having to adapt to Bolivian mice" may have fuelled some of the tabloid myths that have stemmed from the case.
At a later appeal, when the cat was named as Maya, the Home Office argued that too much weight had been given at the earlier hearing on the impact on the student of having to return to Bolivia and leave behind not only his partner but also the jointly owned cat. May was relying on this last night to but even she conceded that the ruling was only "in part" based on the man's ownership of a cat called Maya.
No wonder Ken Clarke was prepared to offer Theresa May good money on Tuesday that nobody's deportation had been refused by the courts solely because they owned a pet cat.