About Us

Thrive Teesside, ATD Fourth World and Dole Animators, together as Poverty 2 Solutions, are a group of activists from across the UK who have direct experience of living in poverty.

Together, we’re using our expertise to propose solutions to some of the biggest issues that lock people in poverty across the UK. We’re taking our ideas to politicians, policymakers and the media.

Impactful engagements with Members of Parliament

We need a new approach to solving poverty. Successive governments have maintained that work is the best route out of poverty – but with 60% of Britons in poverty living in a household where someone is working, it’s clear that poverty affects both those in and out of work. It’s also clear that – too often – the benefit system is not providing the support people need, with benefit changes often pushing families further into poverty and making entering work more, rather than less, difficult. 

We also believe that people who have experienced poverty, benefit changes, and services designed to support transitions into work, should be part of efforts to design policies that will tackle UK poverty effectively – this will help build a great society that works for us all. 

That’s why we’ve decided to work together, to discuss the problems we face every day and to think about possible solutions to some of these issues.

We’ve already taken our ideas to politicians, policymakers and the media, but now we want to focus attention on making sure that the voices of people in poverty are included in policy and media debates.

The Socio-Economic Duty is the missing piece in equality legislation. Whilst a wide range of inequalities including age, gender and race are included, socio-economic status remains  a glaring omission. This means the government has no duty to think about reducing poverty and inequality in their policy and decision making.

If combined with the meaningful engagement of people with lived experience, the Socio-Economic Duty has the power to produce  better policies, services and – ultimately – a fairer society.

Poverty2Solutions at the Labour Party Conference

The Do Your Duty campaign  and briefing paper was launched at the Labour Party conference fringe event and set in motion the next targeted steps to seek support from others with influence, contacts and expertise. A high profile and well branded fringe event featured a panel of high profile speakers including the Labour shadow minister (Kate Green MP) and representatives from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. (JRF) (Daisy Sands), Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) (Carla Clarke) and Povery2Solutions (Dylan Eastwood).

The event was chaired by Ayesha Hazarika, a journalist and comedian, who also acted as an advisor to Harriet Harman during the development of the 2010 Equality Act. This event sparked a lively debate on the value of implementing the socio-economic duty, with particular emphasis placed on the value of collaborating with lived experience to effectively implement and monitor the duty.