A message from our Chair, Emma Thompson

Emma first started supporting ActionAid in 2000. She has since committed a huge amount of support and energy, having visited ActionAid projects in Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and most recently in South Africa.

I've been working with ActionAid since 2000, and every trip I've made, every member of staff I've met and every project I've seen convinced me that it is one of our most genuinely progressive and effective organisations.

I do not like to call this "charity" work. For me, this work is about the pursuit of human rights. It's about reaching for some kind of acceptable balance in a world where the gap between rich and poor is not only widening but reaching utterly obscene proportions. It's about protesting in word and deed in three main areas: at grassroots level by giving confidence and a voice to people who live with overwhelming challenges; at a civil society level supporting local organisations and helping them to lobby their own governments; and at an international level by grabbing the attention of politicians and journalists.

How can any of us live comfortably, knowing that the majority of our fellow men and women live in abject poverty, a poverty that it is perfectly within our power to alter?

Being a member of ActionAid's Ambassador Network gives me the opportunity to support ActionAid's most challenging work with some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. Your financial support is important and without it so many projects just would not happen. It also helps me to inform myself, to act upon what I learn and to shout, time after time, "This must stop". Change will only come when the voices of the rich minority join those of the poor majority and challenge the status quo.

Join us.

Emma Thompson
Chair of the Ambassador Network

photo : ©ActionAid/ Jenny Matthews