Our mission: To use technology to challenge poverty, working with poor people to:

• build their capabilities,
• improve their access to technical options and knowledge, and
• help them influence the social, economic and institutional systems for innovation and use of technology

Technology matters

In the developed world it is easy to take for granted the technological advances that improve our lives. In the developing world, there is little to take for granted.

Poor people are excluded by cost, distance or lack of political clout from accessing essential services and the technologies that could promote their wellbeing, improve their livelihoods and help them cope with the impact of climate change. Scientific research and technological innovation are more attuned to the self-interest of rich and powerful elites, rather than public interest and conditions in the developing world.

We want to change this.

In the right environment, technological advance can be an effective lever out of poverty. That’s why our definition of technology includes not just gadgets, machinery or physical infrastructure but ideas, skills and services and the capacity to organise and use all of these in a way which helps the poor, too.

Poor people need access to new technologies suitable to their circumstances, a choice of technologies and a say in what and how technologies are developed. We help them achieve this through adapting traditional technologies, testing and introducing new ones and challenging the barriers that get in the way. We and our partners work for a sustainable society which acknowledges that existing patterns of resource consumption by rich countries are in themselves unsustainable and also cannot ever be scaled up to the whole of the world's population.

Where we think that a change in technology could harm the environment or people’s health, we will take action to control or prevent it. In our programmes, we are committed to waste as little as possible, recycle wherever we can and promote renewable energies wherever possible.

Download the current group strategy, People and Technology: transforming lives (PDF, 2.8Mb)

Our programme aims

Our project work is organised into four international programmes:

Closing the technology gap

We help poor communities respond to the challenges of new technologies, helping them to access effective technologies that can change lives forever.

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Improving access to services

We help poor communities gain access to basic services – water, sanitation, housing and electricity.

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Making markets work for the poor

Practical Action’s Markets and Livelihoods projects support small producers to overcome poverty and sustain their livelihoods by improving their ability to access, and get more from, the market.

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Reducing vulnerability

Our Reducing Vulnerability projects help poor people to use technology to cope with natural disasters, environmental degradation and civil conflict.

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