Changing lives since 1972

For 35 years, ActionAid has helped ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. Through child sponsorship, the lives of millions of children and their communities have been transformed, but we want to transform millions more.

Founded as a child sponsorship charity in 1972, ActionAid (formerly Action in Distress) was set up to help children living in poverty around the world.

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.

Since then, the children we have sponsored have gone on to achieve great things and some have even gone on to work with ActionAid themselves.

Through sponsorship, Alieu DarboeAlieu Darboe was able to complete his secondary education in The Gambia and go on to university in Canada. After completing a BA in English and International Development Studies at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Darboe worked as a Graduate Assistant at the University of The Gambia. He then returned to Canada to complete his MA and joined ActionAid in April 2004 and is now Governance Manager in The Gambia.

"There are many from my community and many other communities that have immensely benefited from this ActionAid support… ActionAid played a big role in making me what I am today and that is one of the reasons I decided to join ActionAid as opposed to a UNDP job I rejected at the time!" - Alieu Darboe

The Next Step
ActionAid has now expanded its child sponsorship program and in 2000 we launched The Next Step, which allows us to reach ever-greater numbers of vulnerable communities through activities such as job-skills training, or savings and loan schemes.

Supporters who have previously sponsored a child (for a period of minimum of five years) are able to transfer their support from a particular Development Area to the Country Programme as a whole, allowing us to reach groups such as migrant workers, bonded labourers and street children, who can’t be sponsored in the usual way because they don’t live in settled communities.

Today, ActionAid has 53,000 child sponsors and 64,700 people supporting The Next Step. Through these, and other schemes, our fundraising and campaigning work has reached almost 13million people in Africa, Asia and Americas.

photo : ©ActionAid/ Jenny Matthews