Active Learning Centre (ALC) was registered as a charity in 1994 to tackle poverty and social exclusion by strengthening rights and democracy. In the early years our work in social analysis, training and the development of educational materials focused on two main areas: support for civil society and the empowerment of women. Examples include:

• Support to political parties in developing issue based politics and the implementation of election procedures.
• Working with civil organisations to strengthen organisation, governance and advocacy. In this field we have trained well over a thousand community activists from hundreds of different civil organisations around the world.
• Empowering women to take part in political decision making. In this field we have trained political representatives in South Africa, Namibia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mauritius, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, the Baltic States, Romania, Hungary.
• Developing women’s role within trade unions, including the design of trade union strategies for organizing in the informal sector in East Africa; production of educational materials for campaigning and strengthening women’s role within the unions.
• Training to raise awareness of the rights of women and children and developing rights-based approaches to poverty reduction.

Women are the majority of the poor and therefore a second strand to our work is gender policy analysis and the design and implementation of equality policies and strategies. Here we have worked with African governments and their departments such as the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia, the Gender Ministries of the Governments of Namibia and Sierra Leone. In collaboration with NGOs, we have worked in countries which have recently signed CEDAW, such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, as well as countries where rights’ violations are of international concern, such as China and the Kurdish region of Turkey, and those entering Europe such as Romania and Hungary. Our work in this area has been strengthened in the last three years by the participation of international equality law specialists and a small business development consultant who has brought a private sector perspective to our work.

In 2000, in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies in the University of Sussex, we embarked on the development of guidance notes and a training course on poverty and poverty reduction for the Department of International Development (DFID). Since then we have delivered over a hundred courses in DFID’s offices world-wide. As each course is tailored for the specific country, this has involved extensive research and poverty policy analysis. The work has led to further consultancies with other agencies for example for UNESCO, whose policy is determined by considering poverty as a denial of human rights, for New Zealand Aid and the Pacific Forum. A number of specialists with core skills in poverty policy analysis and anti-poverty strategy development with professional experience of working with governments on macroeconomic policy development have contributed to this work.

Whilst we continue to offer training and the development of educational materials in our core areas of rights and governance, we have also undertaken research and evaluation for organisations such as Oxfam and Christian Aid and the European Union and consultancy work. Recent examples include acting as the advocacy consultant for a project on girls’ education and training in China, on civil society development in Ethiopia, Syria and Pakistan and in Turkey on the implementation of women’s rights and developing the NGO response to Turkey’s report on CEDAW.