APT Action on Poverty

Who we are

Action on Poverty is a small dynamic charity working across Sub-Saharan Africa to break the cycle of poverty.

We were established in 1984 and are focused on providing economic solutions to address hunger, injustice and barriers to safe and lasting work for people in Sub Saharan Africa.

We aim to bring about sustainable economic and social transformation, by working with people to obtain a livelihood through enterprise (including agricultural) and employment.

Our culture and values

Who we work with:  people living in poverty who are marginalised by society, excluded through their disability, gender, age, HIV/AIDS status, conflict, ethnicity or environment. 

Our area of activity and expertise:  Enabling people to improve their livelihoods through access to markets and decent work.

We assist these target groups to participate in mainstream markets, enabling them to access incomes and to create and/or develop sustainable livelihoods. 

We also tackle the reasons for vulnerability and exclusion, building on the self-reliance and dignity secured through economic solutions to tackle stigma, discrimination and abuse of rights. We believe the synergy between these has great value.

Our partnerships with local organisations, fostering their independent development.

 We exchange expertise and strengthen capacity according to need and aspiration. Whilst this has been part of our approach for many years, we continue to assess ways of supporting further power shift for locally led development.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

We value diversity and seek to reflect this in our staff team. We welcome applications from people from all sections of the community, irrespective of race, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief.

We target our help to working with people who have been marginalized in Africa including young people and children, women, people with disabilities, workers, people affected by conflict, HIV and AIDS or people in fragile environments.

We consider that poverty and gender inequality are inextricably linked and this is reflected in our work.  Unequal access to and control over resources and services, and the social discrimination which keeps this in place, presents serious obstacles to women in particular; we aim to address their social and economic deprivation.