Part of ‘The Work of an NGO’ resource | ActionAid schools | April 2012 | 1

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

Part of ‘The Work of an NGO’ resource | ActionAid schools | April 2012 | 2

• School uniforms & equipment for sponsored children

• Focus on individual children

• Non-sponsored children left out

ActionAid in the 1970’s

Part of ‘The Work of an NGO’ resource | ActionAid schools | April 2012 | 3

ActionAid in the 1980’s

• Building schools, supplying seeds and farming equipment, improving water supply

• Focus on whole community

• Good short-term impact

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• More focus on longer term solutions

• Helping communities to help themselves

• Working to benefit people beyond the communities we worked in

ActionAid in the 1990’s

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• 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

ActionAid in the late 1990’s

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“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

ActionAid today

PHOTO: GREG FUNNELL/ACTIONAID