Paper Trail is a charity and a social enterprise but what is this?
Social enterprise is defined by Government as:
A business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profits for shareholders and owners.
So, Paper Trail's social enterprise generates profits to reinvest for a particular social purpose.
Mission
We have a clear sense of Paper Trail's social mission: to discover historical information relating to the conflict in Ireland and Britain, and to ensure that it reaches the families who need and deserve it - the victims and survivors of the conflict.
This information in official archives may be upsetting, especially since it has been hidden for so long, but I believe that it is the families' by right.
Business for Social Good
Paper Trail's social enterprisehas its genesis in over a decade's research which I performed in a personal pursuit for truth regarding the murder of my own grandmother during the conflict.
Increasingly, I helped other families access information regarding the death of their loved ones, and worked closely with their legal representatives to help build their cases.
Whilst Paper Trail's services are free to victims and survivors, legal teams and the media avail of them for their projects. Any money made goes straight to Paper Trail and helps us pay for operational costs and invaluable trips to archives across Britain and Ireland.
Unfortunately, more and more families will have to seek a measure of redress via the court system as the mechanisms for truth recovery offered by the state have failed. Yet again these families - from all sides of the community - have been badly let down by people who should be defending their basic human rights.
So Paper Trail will help families in their search for truth, and it is driven by a simple belief in human rights and social justice.
It was only natural that the profits it generates are reinvested to enable us to help other families, regardless of their background, religion or political beliefs.
We may have the opportunity to work with you soon too.
Update
This was one of our first Paper Trail posts, written on Christmas Day in 2014. I am writing 10 years later.
There should have been no need for Paper Trail as the Stormont House Agreement was agreed by the main parties in the North of Ireland and the Irish and British governments in December 2014. We anticipated that the British government had little intention of dealing with the legacy of its past fairly... and we were correct, unfortunately.
The need for Paper Trail has grown.
First, we secured funding from the Executive Office, then from Peace IV and Victims and Survivors Service. We are now transitioning to funding from PEACEPLUS in 2024.
In 10 years, Paper Trail:
- Supported over 350 victims and their families;
- Supported over 350 learners and beneficiaries of our services;
- Investigated over 120 individual cases accounting for over 220 lost lives and 440 injured victims;
- Retrieved and collated over half a million targeted legacy archives from across Ireland and Britain.
- Developed websites, social media networks and our new e-learning platform, Paper Trail Online.
Paper Trail’s legacy archive research has proved so successful that we provided new evidence for:
- Over 60 legacy inquests;
- Scores of civil cases and judicial reviews;
- A Supreme Court case.
We have also published:
- Books and expert reports that have made headline news
- Videos and podcasts across social media channels
- Hundreds of thousands of words
However rewarding and valuable, Paper Trail's work is laborious, time-consuming, and costly, but we did all of this with the support of families and volunteers from across the community over the last decade.
You can follow us here and on Paper Trail’s website.
Victims and survivors can now also join Paper Trail Online and learn for free. We have loads of free resources to help families learn the skills of legacy archive research and recording lived experiences.
