Our vision is a world without poverty in which every person can exercise their right to a life of dignity.
ActionAid is a unique partnership of people who are fighting for a better world - a world without poverty. As one of the UK’s largest development agencies, we work in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, listening to, learning from and working in partnership with over nine million of the world’s poorest people.
Our mission is to work with poor and marginalised people to eradicate poverty by overcoming the injustice and inequity that cause it. As an organisation, we live and work by the following values: mutual respect, equity and justice, honesty and transparency, solidarity with poor and marginalised people, courage of conviction, humility.
We believe that by fighting poverty together - working with poor local communities, national governments and international organisations - we can help bring about real change to the lives of poor people.
ActionAid’s mission is to work with poor and marginalised people to eradicate poverty by overcoming the injustice and inequity that cause it.
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights set out a framework for governments to sign up to. Many consequent UN conventions recognise people’s rights to education, shelter, food, water and health.
Most countries have signed the declaration and conventions, and many recognise these basic rights in their constitutions, but there is still a long way to go before we achieve basic rights for all. Nevertheless, it is widely understood that poverty will not end until basic rights are both recognised and achieved.
ActionAid works alongside poor and marginalised communities to help them recognise, promote and secure their basic rights, enhance their control over development work, and their ability to defend their interests. We believe that people should be engaged in development, not as a privilege, but as a right. We recognise the active role of poor and marginalised people, while emphasising the responsibilities of the state towards them.
When ActionAid was founded in 1972, there were 88 UK supporters sponsoring 88 children in India and Kenya. Our focus then was on delivering specific services to individuals, providing children with an education.
Over the years our role grew to helping families and communities to support themselves, improving education, healthcare, access to water and an income.
We realised that providing people with basic services was limited to meeting immediate needs and did not tackle the root causes of poverty which are found in the very unjust distribution of power and resources. We therefore widened our scope, and today we work with poor communities, helping them identify and demand their own rights.
These activities have more far-reaching effects, because communities increase their understanding of the causes of their own poverty and marginalisation and the linkages between power and resources. They learn what they can do to bring about change, who is included and excluded from decision-making in communities, and work out together how they can represent themselves and gain access to their entitlements.
We also work with governments, locally and nationally, to help them build their knowledge and skills so that they can fight poverty effectively in their own countries and international arenas.
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