About Us
Poverty2Solutions is an award-winning campaign group that merges lived and learned expertise of poverty and socio-economic disadvantage to revolutionise policymaking. We use participatory methods that put people and experience at the heart of our work.
“We are the voice of our communities with the skills and experience to influence change. We are solution focussed and innovative. We have seen how bad policy decisions have had a negative impact on people who are already struggling. Being part of the decision making process can prevent further suffering in low income communities”
Corrina, Thrive
We have firsthand experiences of living in poverty, navigating benefit changes, and engaging with services designed to support transitions into work. Every day, people like us across the UK, are forced to find their own solutions to the challenges they face.
Lived experience holds a wealth of expertise - like the solutions we have developed in response to issues. But this crucial knowledge is often missing when it comes to designing policy. Instead, learned knowledge and professional policy-making expertise is valued more.
We advocate for lived experience to be recognised as an essential foundation for a collaborative and participatory process that develops effective measures to tackle poverty and socio-economic inequality.
Timeline
In 2016, we came together as three grassroots community groups to outline the policy changes we believed would make a lasting difference to those living in poverty. We realised that collaboration between a diverse mix of skillsets and expertise was needed to make these changes a reality.
Since then, we’ve grown our collective to include leading policy makers, researchers and design thinkers. Together, we’ve kick-started our campaign by attending cross-parliamentary discussions on poverty, hosting a manifesto launch at the Labour Party Fringe and appeared on the likes of BBC Radio 4.
Our team
Poverty2Solutions’ unique ways of working and structure, merges lived experience and expertise with policy expertise, academic insight, and graphic design skills in novel and important ways.
We are a team of :
Community Activists
Writers
Makers
Spokespeople
Media representatives
Researchers
Graphic designers
Policy advisors
Together, we continue to innovate in our efforts to affect change, working creatively, deliberatively, and effectively.
Want to be part of the team?
If you’re an activist, third sector organisation, politician, civil servant or decision maker - we need your support to put lived experience at the heart of Participatory Policy Making.