About this group

Who and what we are:- 

Amnesty International consists of ordinary people from around the world standing up for human rights. Our purpose is to protect individuals wherever: 

justice ; fairness; freedom; and truth

are denied.

The Ayrshire Group has been in existence since the 1980s. Although we are a small group, we are very active and very proud of our work. Over the years we have participated in many of Amnesty’s national campaigns and have successfully spread the work about Amnesty International throughout our part of Scotland.

We can send minutes of our meetings by e-mail as well as by post to interested members of the public who are not able to attend our meetings, but would like to be involved.

Get Involved

There are several ways in which you can become involved with the Ayrshire Group of Amnesty International.

Meetings

Come along to one of our meetings. These are usually held on the second Wednesday of every month in Holy Trinity Church Hall in Ayr (in Fullarton Street, near the Gaiety Theatre) at 7:30pm. At these meetings we organise our present and future campaign work, and this is also the main way we keep in touch with each other.

Public Meetings

We regularly organise public meetings where we visit towns throughout Ayrshire with speakers both from Amnesty and other campaigning groups. We have held meetings on the refugees issue in Irvine and Troon, on Israel/Palestine in Irvine and the arms trade in Kilmarnock. In Ayr, our guest speakers have spoken about Israel/Palestine, Colombia, Kurdistan and violence against women.

If You Cannot Attend Meetings …

… you can still take part in the Ayrshire Group of Amnesty International . You can do this by writing letters as part of our campaigns, helping to raise funds or submitting articles for our web-site.

Letter Writing

This is the main way in which you can be involved with Amnesty International even if you are not able to attend our monthly meetings. Writing letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience is a very popular method of campaigning in Amnesty. 

There are many hundreds of these prisoners being held in many countries around the world and Amnesty receives information daily about people in danger. If it is believed that Urgent Action is the best way to help an individual then Amnesty International UK will prepare a case on the person and either post or e-mail this to supporters to make urgent contact on behalf of the prisoner to an important figure in the country, such as the President.

Fundraising

Like all other Amnesty groups, we are constantly using funds in our campaign work and therefore we are continually fundraising! We do this by holding street collections in the main towns of Ayrshire and also through our larger events where people are invited both to take part in activities and also to help us raise funds.