Oxfam: Improving Livelihoods

Poverty today

You’re more likely to be poor if you’re a woman – women  earn just 10% of the world’s income, yet work two-thirds of the world’s working hours.

Poverty is about injustice and inequality, wherever you are. It can mean children going to school hungry or to bed without enough food.

It can mean not being able to afford a winter coat or to heat your home. It’s no coincidence that people in poor communities are in worse health and have a shorter life expectancy and as costs soar, the problem is expected to get worse.

Combating poverty through improving nutrition & self-esteem

The Unilever Foundation’s partnership with Oxfam will improve lives around the world through programs designed to empower individuals – particularly women – and to deliver good nutrition and clean, safe drinking water.

In the UK and Ireland, the Unilever Foundation is supporting Oxfam’s efforts to combat poverty in underprivileged communities with a focus on improving nutrition and self-esteem. The goal is to work together to enable women and their families to move from surviving to thriving.

Unilever is working with Oxfam in three ways: 

• Developing projects with people living in poverty to improve their lives and show how things can change.

• Raising public awareness of poverty in the UK to create pressure for change.

• Working with policy makers to tackle the causes of poverty.

With support from the Unilever Foundation, Oxfam is focused on ensuring that people in the UK and Ireland have a secure income which gives them enough money to live on.

Oxfam is also tackling the discrimination that makes women, ethnic minority groups and others more vulnerable to poverty.

Internationally, Unilever is also working with Oxfam on disaster and emergency relief in Pakistan and the Horn of Africa.

More information about our partnership with Oxfam in other countries will be shared here as it becomes available.