How marketers can help refugees StepUp and out of poverty

The International Refugee Trust (IRT) is a small international development charity that has been working on a promising set of solutions. Their StepUp programme achieves breakthrough success by working with crisis-affected communities so that the communities themselves address the root causes of poverty and set up the foundations for long-term development.  

The StepUp programme offers training support in five core areas: sustainable farming, sanitation and health, income generation and savings, and finally education and gender equity.

A Pimp My Cause volunteer, David Burns, a young video editor, has created a film to showcase the importance of the StepUp programme. David was very pleased to be able to use his skills to support their great work and he was also able to use the experience he gained from creating this film to land the great video editing job he had been seeking.


The scale of the problem that IRT faces is vast. For example, Northern Uganda now faces the challenge of a legacy of decades of rebel violence, where families were forced to leave their farms and communities to flee into the jungle or live in UN camps.

As the violence declines and the rebels are forced out of the country, families return and dream of rebuilding their lives. The problem they face is that living in camps, away from their farms for decades has caused a lost generation – a generation without the skills needed to farm, to work, to earn money. They are trapped in poverty, dependant on aid, which in turn perpetuates poverty and increases the chance of further conflict.

As a result 80% of the people in Northern Uganda are subsistence farmers, which means they live hand-to-mouth growing just enough food for one meal a day. Farming is heavy work yet over 75% of the labour is done by women who work 12-18 hour days. When girls are old enough they work in the fields and help with chores, missing out on formal education.

IRT’s StepUp programme is a different approach to development work and poverty in Africa. It recognises that one-off projects are only a stop gap and do not tackle long-term poverty and can serve to exacerbate the dependence on aid.

StepUp teaches people the skills they need so that they are no longer dependant on hand-outs and to rebuild their communities to prevent future conflict. It is an intensive programme that is open to anyone who is willing to put in the time and effort required by the training. The goal at the end of the four year programme is for each family to be able to produce enough food to eat three meals a day, to have significantly fewer common illnesses and to triple their income.

One participant said, “Before the programme, we didn’t have this house, it is the knowledge and skills the programme gave us that enabled us to produce more in our fields and build this house, because we were trained not to depend only on farming, which many times is affected by weather. So we listened to that, they gave us business skills, and we managed to save money and build this house and finally we opened this small shop.”

How your marketing skills can help drive sustainable development in Uganda
Like many charities IRT has a very loyal, but aging donor base. They need your help to expand that base and reach a younger demographic.

How can they make the most of their budget? IRT knows that most young professionals and young families find the causes they support through mainstream marketing channels. But they have a very limited media budget, so they need creative ideas for how to reach new groups with the potential to become supporters and donors.

Another critical area to their success is being able to communicate the StepUp programme to potential donors, supporters and the media. IRT will soon be launching a new website that will be mobile friendly and will help to share the stories from the communities they support with their donors.

Time to StepUp
They now need your help with finding the language to translate the StepUp programme into a brand story that will catch on and inspire new supporters.

Please email Anna Mullenneaux ([email protected]), chief match maker at Pimp My Cause, if you are interested in supporting them with your marketing expertise.