40 years of fighting poverty: a short history of ActionAid’s education work

1. 40 years of fighting poverty: a short history of ActionAid’s education work

2. ActionAid in the 1970’s • School uniforms & equipment for sponsored children • Focus on individual children • Non-sponsored children left out

3. ActionAid in the 1980’s • Building schools, supplying seeds and farming equipment, improving water supply • Focus on whole community • Good short-term impact

4. ActionAid in the 1990’s • More focus on longer term solutions • Helping communities to help themselves • Working to benefit people beyond the communities we worked in

5. ActionAid in the late 1990’s • Recognising people’s own knowledge about what needs to be done • Help people to know where to go and who to ask • Campaigning to link local problems to national and international solutions

6. ActionAid today “We go beyond making sure people have what they need to survive day to day by ensuring that people take ownership of their own development. This is because, at the end of the day, we will step aside. It is definitely a more sustainable approach.” Tennyson Williams Country Programme Director, Kenya PHOTO: GREG FUNNELL/ACTIONAID