Our international programme work

HelpAge International

HelpAge International is a development agency and a network of older people’s associations, community-based organisations, NGOs, academic institutions and international agencies.

As a network, HelpAge International has more than 80 affiliates in over 50 countries. It is the only global network of not-for-profit organisations with a mission to improve the lives of disadvantaged older people.

As a development agency, HelpAge International works with local partners to implement development and emergency relief programmes in more than 40 developing countries.

Its main focus areas are:

• enabling older people to have secure incomes;
• enabling older people and those they support to receive quality health, HIV and care services;
• enabling older people to actively participate in and be better supported during emergency and recovery situations;
• building global and local movements that enable older people to challenge age discrimination and claim their rights;
• supporting a growing global network of organisations to improve their work with, and for, older men and women.

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)

Age UK delivers its emergency relief work through its sister organisation, HelpAge International. We are also a member of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), a network of 14 humanitarian agencies in the UK.

The DEC comes together when there is a pressing need for co-ordinated action, when the members have the ability to make a real difference and when there is sufficient public awareness to assume an appeal would succeed.

Other partners overseas

Age UK also supports non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the Western Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Political and economic changes since the breakdown of the Soviet bloc have caused social problems throughout the region.

Age UK is working to improve conditions for older people through a Russian NGO (Dobroe Delo), a Ukrainian NGO: (Turbota pro Litinh v Ukraini) and a network of NGOs focused on people in later life in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia, which is supported with funding from the European Commission.