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Practical Action

The charity Practical Action is about exploiting the fact that simple ideas can change lives forever.

It has for over 40 years been helping people directly to transform their lives for the better. Using simple technologies and people power are at the heart of this charity's ethos.

And people are the key for Practical Action. Only the poor themselves can make a difference to their own lives, once they have the means to make a change.

So Practical Action are all about providing the means by which people can make the necessary changes. Not for them the grand master plans and huge infra-structure projects that many charities are occupied with. Practical Action, as its name suggests, is all about help at the grass roots levels. The concept of taking an idea, an idea conceived from the people themselves and then exploiting it to make changes for the better, are fundamental to getting people out of poverty. And that means the process must remain in the hands of the people being helped, and not the charity workers. People must shape the technology they are using, conceive their own plans and thereby control their own destiny.

Practical Action claim that their four prong approach is unique. Firstly, they focus on reducing the vulnerability of the people they are helping to such things as natural disasters, war and conflicts, and environmental damage. Secondly, they show how to make markets work for the poor. This means showing people in practical terms how to make a better living by producing and selling their goods to the best effect possible. Thirdly, improving access to services. And that means getting poor communities access to the basic services in life, including fresh water, sanitation, usable housing and power. Fourthly, new technologies. Showing people how to enhance technology and embrace it, for the good of their lives.

Practical Action believes in putting its own philosophy to good effect, and at the time of writing it is involved with over 100 projects worldwide. In addition, in the years 2006 to 2007, it out-reached to over 600,000 people via various consultancy and educational work projects.

And as well as working on the underlying causes of poverty, it actively campaigns to influence those that can effect poverty. It also has a technical information service which acts as a resource centre and prepares technical briefs.

Its education unit offers people in the U.K., mostly teachers, their pupils and young people in general, a chance to learn about Practical Action charity work and understand the ideas behind sustainable development. The charity also provides consultancy and publishing activities.

The charity concentrates its efforts in four regions of the developing world: East Africa, Latin America, Southern Africa and South Asia. It tends to concentrate its efforts in the countries of Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

As to its history, it was formed in 1966 by the radical economist Dr E F Schumacher and was known initially as the Intermediate Technology Development Group. Dr Schumacher used the charity to prove that his philosophy of small is beautiful could make a real difference to people's lives. He was committed to reducing poverty, environmental conservation and giving people the chance of using a small amount of technology to make a difference to their lives.

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