Our history

Founded in 1972, ActionAid has been fighting poverty worldwide for over 30 years. In 2003, ActionAid's work reached almost 13 million people in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

1970s
ActionAid was founded by British businessman Cecil Jackson-Cole as a child sponsorship charity (originally called Action in Distress) in 1972, with 88 UK supporters sponsoring 88 children in India and Kenya. Our focus was on providing children with an education.

During our first decade we established long-term programmes in India, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi and The Gambia, and saw our first emergency work in Honduras and Bangladesh. Our work expanded to include long-term health, sanitation and agricultural projects that would improve living conditions for children and their families.

1980s
The 1980s saw a huge increase in the number of countries we work in. We expanded our potential supporter base, with affiliated organisations being established in France, Spain, Ireland and Italy.

Our focus shifted to tackling the root causes of poverty, not just the symptoms. We began to work with communities to boost agricultural production, improve water supplies, gain access to basic healthcare and find new sources of income. We helped poor people organise themselves to challenge injustice and demand their entitlements from their own governments.

In 1987 we funded a new organisation in Uganda, called the AIDS Support Organisation. Since then our HIV & AIDS work has greatly expanded,

In 1988, in response to UK teachers’ requests, we produced 20 school resource packs. These were so successful that by 1994 half the schools in the UK were using ActionAid’s education materials. Today these include CD-ROMs, videos, photo-packs and reference books for use in geography, literacy, citizenship and modern languages classes.

1990s
During the 1990s we launched two international campaigns, on education and food rights. Reflect, our innovative approach to adult learning, was piloted in Uganda, Bangladesh and El Salvador, and is now used in over 50 countries.

We increasingly focused on ways of supporting people to bring about positive changes in their communities – and began to lobby governments and agencies like the World Bank and UN to take poor people’s needs into account. We started working on peace building and reconciliation in a number of African countries, to help prevent violent conflict and cultivate peace in post-conflict situations.

2000 and beyond
In 2003, we launched ActionAid International as a coalition fighting poverty across the globe. We established a new head office in South Africa, and began the process of making all our country programmes equal partners, with an equal say on how we operate.

Now we are helping over 13 million of the world's poorest and most disadvantaged people in 42 countries worldwide. In all of our country programmes we work with local partners to make the most of their knowledge and experience.