Philanthropy and Partnerships

2022 was a challenging year for women, girls and communities facing disasters and conflict around the world. Since January, ActionAid has responded to over 25 new and ongoing emergencies, including cyclones, earthquakes, flooding, drought and conflict. We continued to deliver life-saving support to meet immediate needs, support communities to recover, and build resilience to withstand shocks. 

Responding to the devastating climate-induced drought and food crisis in East Africa was one of our key priorities in 2022. The drought has affected more than 36 million people, and ActionAid declared the situation to be a Red Alert, our highest level of global humanitarian priority. Our emergency response teams are working with affected communities, providing life-saving food, water and cash grants. We are also working alongside farmers to build resilience by providing seeds, tools and training on climate resilient farming and creating safe spaces for women and girls. We have already reached almost 300,000 people through this response. 

2022 was a year of climate catastrophes for every corner of the globe. We continued to support women and girls on the frontlines of climate change to build resilience within their communities, as well as leading in the fight against climate change at national and international levels. Addressing the impacts of climate change will continue to shape our programmes, advocacy, and policy work in 2023. 

Agroecology continued to form a key part of our global strategy, and efforts to address the climate and food crises. For example, we are working with 300 communities in Ghana to adopt environmentally sustainable agricultural practices and as a result, 2,000 women are already practicing techniques such as agroforesty, woodlots and composting. We also conducted research in Cambodia and Nepal on government funding for agroecology. The findings will support farmers networks to lobby their governments to shift funding from harmful chemical intensive agriculture to sustainable organic approaches. 

Tackling violence against women and girls continued to be an important focus of our research, policy, campaigns and programmes work in 2022. 

In 2022, ActionAid continued to play a leading role in the ‘Support to the Africa-led Movement to End FGM/C’ - a UK-government funded five-year programme designed to significantly reduce female genital mutilation in several countries in Africa by 2025. The programme recognises the expertise of women and girls, and places them at the heart of project design, implementation and evaluation. 

We are working in partnership with a number of organisations to deliver this important work. ActionAid is one of the leads on community interventions, advocacy and learning outputs. This includes ensuring a focus on girl-centred programming, facilitating participatory and rights-based dialogue through our Reflect-Action approach, involving young people through our Activista network and Global Platforms, and working with women’s rights organisations. The project builds on our previous successes in this area and will continue to be a key focus of our work in Kenya, Somaliland, Ethiopia and Senegal over the next three years. 

In 2022, we continued to support women and girls across the globe to develop their skills, access secure jobs in safe working environments, enjoy social protections such as paid maternity leave, and reduce the burden of unpaid domestic work that falls to women. 

As part of a women’s economic empowerment programme in Nepal, we are supporting women to establish and strengthen 20 collectives to enable members to earn and benefit from an income for years to come. We are also providing training to develop women’s technical skills, raising awareness of the challenge of women’s paid and unpaid care work and supporting women’s collectives to advocate for women’s rights at a local and national level. This work is building on previous programming which was been generously funded by our supporters, and we hope to reach 600 women through this project.