Christmas charity appeal

Each year, we run a Christmas appeal to help change the world with women and girls.

Later in 2025 we'll launch a new Christmas campaign.

How to support our Christmas appeals

These are just some of the ways you can donate to our work at Christmas.

Millicent, ActionAid christmas appeal 2022

Donate now to help fund our life-changing work

Buy a Christmas gift from our Gifts in Action collection

Buy a pack of charity Christmas cards

How your support helps

Thank you for all of your incredible support over Christmas 2024. Your donations are helping women like Doreen transform their lives.

When war broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — Doreen lost her husband and everything she held dear.

Fearing for her own life and the safety of her four children, she had no choice but to flee her home for a refugee camp in Uganda.

On reaching the Imvepi refugee settlement in Uganda, Doreen found herself faced with further challenges to overcome - from lack of shelter to food shortages.

“We had no clothes, we had no food in our store, we even had no money,” Doreen recalled.

But Doreen didn't give up. At the camp, she discovered ActionAid’s partner, a local, women-led organisation called Community Transformation Agenda (COTA), who helped her farm a patch of land, where she now grows crops to feed her family or to sell.

Today, Doreen is a leader at Imvepi Refugee Settlement. Despite all she has endured, Doreen remains focused on promoting women’s rights and helps tackle violence against women.

Doreen, originally from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is a community leader in Imvepi Refugee Settlement

Immaculate Bashaba /ActionAid

New independence: Rumana’s story

“I love that my mother is a farmer - it makes me proud to watch her every day and do something she loves,” says 16-year-old Rumana, from Bangladesh.

Around here, women don’t usually work and farming was once seen as a man’s job. But this is changing. Now nearly all the women in our village farm and earn a living.”

Rumana lives in a multi-generational home, which she shares with 22 others, and has been hit hard by the cost of living crisis. But it’s her mum Srimoti, a farmer and member of a local women’s group, who is helping them to make it through.

“My mother has found a new sense of independence since she started farming,” Rumana says. “She is able to contribute towards our household and I hope to one day be self-reliant like her too.”

"Everyone says it’s important for girls to know how to cook but I think it’s more important that we know how to grow. Being able to grow your own food means that in a crisis, you will still have something to survive on.”

Will you donate to our appeal to help more girls like Rumana to grow a better future?

The women your donation could support

Helping women like Millicent to escape violence

Millicent, from Uganda, is a survivor of extreme violence. She was beaten, imprisoned and attacked with acid by her former husband. She and her children were left homeless, before finding safety at an ActionAid shelter.

"I had nowhere to sleep. I had nothing to eat," she says. "ActionAid stood with me during that period. They took me to the hospital, I got treatment.

"Even if I lost one eye, at least I am still alive."

At the shelter, Millicent spoke to legal professionals who took her seriously for the first time. They supported her through a new court case: "ActionAid did not get tired. It continued facilitating witnesses to come to Court for a period of one year and three months," she says. Finally, Millicent won her case and her former husband was convicted.
Helping leaders like Florence to transform communities

More than 10,900 women have been supported by an ActionAid women’s shelter in Uganda alone, since 2019. Florence, director of a woman's network in Kampala, is one of the pioneering women who are working to make a difference.

"I am very proud of what I am doing and I have passion for it, because when I see the women are smiling, I also smile," she says.

"My strength is that I have talked to many survivors, I have counselled many survivors and I am proud that most of the survivors I have counselled are doing well. Women are coming out and saying no, as women, we should stand up and do our own things and not be dependent on men."

Support more women like Millicent and Florence

Our Christmas appeals