Our work with partners includes:

• providing health and social services, and advocating for improved access to services
• supporting income-generating activities and advocating for older people to be included in credit schemes
• pressing for social-protection measures, including social pensions, particularly for older people in their role as carers
• helping to strengthen older people’s groups and organisations concerned with ageing
• helping to develop networks to strengthen advocacy
• facilitating exchanges of expertise through meetings, training workshops, exchange visits and publications
• putting community organisations in touch with academic institutions and governments to support advocacy
• distributing materials to share learning and raise awareness of ageing issues.

A growing number of partners join HelpAge International as affiliates and have a role in its governance.

Organisations interested in working with us should contact their nearest HelpAge International office. Please note, however, that HelpAge International is not a funding agency and we cannot consider requests for funding.

Examples of partnerships

We work with community groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments, international agencies and academic institutions on emergency relief, development programmes, research and policy development. These are some examples of our partnerships:

With local organisations

We are working with HelpAge India and partners in southern India to support older people and their families to rebuild their lives after losing their homes in the Indian Ocean tsunami.

In Jamaica, our partner, SACDA, is supporting groups of older people in poor rural communities to monitor their access to government social- assistance schemes, and to advocate for improvements.

In the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, our partners, UMUT and the Foundation for Tolerance International, are supporting older people's self-help groups to tackle problems associated with high unemployment, the collapse of state welfare systems and border tensions.

With governments and international agencies

Our ongoing work with the Government of Tanzania has led to the inclusion of a social-protection goal that targets older people, and a goal to combat social exclusion, in its revised poverty-reduction strategy.

We have seconded a member of staff to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Darfur, Sudan, to ensure that older people are specifically included in its response to the conflict.

We and our partners in Bolivia are working with the local government of Sucre to provide socio-legal services to older people, by helping them to obtain identity papers, access their entitlements and resolve cases of abuse.

We have worked with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for many years to put ageing issues at the centre of development policy. We have contributed to DFID policies on social exclusion, support to older carers within HIV/AIDS programmes, providing social protection as a means of delivering better aid, developing EU policy and protecting the rights of people living in extreme poverty.

With academic institutions

We have been working with the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, an international partnership of universities, research institutes and NGOs, on research into ageing and chronic poverty.

We have close ties with a number of academic institutions in developing countries. For example, we have run joint training programmes with Chiang Mai University in Thailand.