Resources & Approaches

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This is the core resource / reference book on ActionAid’s rights-based approach, first produced in 2011, updated in 2016 and again in 2020. It outlines eight core principles of our HRBA and AA’s theory of change. It then has substantive sections on building the power of people (through empowerment, campaigning, solidarity and alternatives). Influencing and shifting power (visible, invisible and hidden) and on increasing rights, redistribution and resilience.

Produced by ActionAid in collaboration with others in 2005 this includes details of critical building blocks around critical thinking, participation, facilitation, questioning and listening, democratising information and accountability.

This report from a ‘Participatory Methodologies Forum’ hosted in Bangladesh involving the leadership of ActionAid, looks at critical issues of power in personal, institutional and political spaces – recognising that participatory methods in themselves are neutral and that they only truly work when accompanied with a vision of and commitment to transforming power.

Many resources are available about the Reflect approach to adult learning and social change. Reflect was developed by ActionAid in 1993 through pilot programmes in Uganda, Bangladesh and El Salvador and spread rapidly through hundreds of organisations, winning 5 UN international literacy prizes. Reflect merged the theory of Paulo Freire with practical visualisation methods developed by Participatory Rural Appraisal and related. It is still widely used both for adult literacy and wider social change processes.

The original Stepping Stones training programme is a training package on gender, HIV, communication and relationship skills. It is also sometimes described as a social norms change training package, covering many aspects of our lives, including why we behave in the ways we do, how gender, generation and other issues influence this, and ways in which we can change our behaviour, if we want to. Stepping Stones was developed between 1993 and 1995, mainly in Uganda, working with a rural community. A convergence with the Reflect approach led to the development of STAR which focused discussions and activities on six broad areas 1) communication; 2) human rights; 3) reproductive health, family and community health; 4) power relations; 5) advocacy and 6) use of peer groups.

This resource helps to build critical awareness and action on tax justice at community level. It shows how potentially complex concepts can be translated for people into meaningful and easy to understand analysis that can guide local action 

This framework offers practical guidance on how to engage with different public services, including education, health, transport, water and sanitation, early childcare, agricultural extension and street lighting. It is framed around four core pillars of what Action Aid believes gender-responsive public services should be:

1. Publicly funded (focus on 4 Ss – share, size, sensitivity and scrutiny of budgets)

2. Publicly, not privately, delivered and universal

3. Gender equitable and inclusive

4. Focused on quality, in line with human rights frameworks.

For each of these pillars the framework provides an analysis of key issues, clear guidance, practical examples and indicators to assess progress

This resource supports participatory processes by children, parents, teachers and community leaders to analyse and act on the state of their local public school. This is based on tracking the state of schools against ten core dimensions of the right to education – and can be used to generate rights-based school improvement plans, district level citizens’ reports and national citizens’ reports on the state of education.

This resource produced by AA with key allies is available in multiple languages, and guides activists to use participatory processes to critically analyse the state of education financing – taking action to link with tax justice, debt justice and challenging austerity

A guide for participatory budget work outlining the budget cycle, understanding revenue and taxes, ways of working with decentralisation and how to achieve local revenue justice 

Tools and guidance for engaging with local public services, understanding rights, getting organised, gathering evidence and demanding accountability

This resource helps to ensure that marginalised community members themselves lead the process in identifying their vulnerabilities – identifying local challenges, impacts of climate and other disasters and local capacities. The process encourages community members to then be active in planning and implementing solutions that work for them.