Areas of expertise

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to tackling poverty and inequality.

We support people to reach true independence through a grassroots, community-led development model.  We sincerely believe in working in partnership, and the voices of those with whom we work are at the forefront of everything we do. We couple this with a culture of innovation and learning that ensures that we challenge the status quo to find impactful and sustainable solutions. Our ultimate goal is always to leave people and communities with agency over their lives. 

Our work spans across many sectors and issues—here’s a flavour of what we do and how we do it.

WASH

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) is a major area of UP’s global programme portfolio, with ongoing or recent projects in Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Gambia, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria and Senegal.  In many of these countries, we’ve been present for over 20 years, and have strong relationships with local governments and communities.

UP is known for its robust and inclusive community-focused WASH interventions, with strong expertise in rural water supply infrastructure and maintenance, Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), and our innovative approaches for behaviour change in schools. In recent years, UP is increasingly taking a systems approach to improving WASH services at scale, strengthening WASH service governance, and applying market-based approaches.

Many of our WASH programmes are integrated with our other sectors - such as nutrition, livelihoods, climate, and sports - to maximise the impact of our work. We have also been active in responding to humanitarian crises in these countries, and strengthening resilience and the ‘humanitarian-development nexus’ are growing focus areas of ours.

Agriculture

Agriculture in rural areas of Asia and Africa is the main source of income and food for the vast majority of the population, so working directly with smallholder farmers has significant potential to improve development outcomes and growth in the countries we work in.

Empowering farmers in the markets they operate in, giving them access to microfinance, increasing their bargaining power and promoting sustainable and efficient farming methods all improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and have a long-lasting and meaningful development impact.

Social Accountability

Our social accountability work enables the independence of the communities we work with by supporting them to advocate for their own rights. We aim to improve the delivery of vital public services, improve our decentralisation process and help prevent and combat high levels of corruption, the lack of transparency in the management of public resources and the lack of public access to information.