5 Compassionate Organizations Addressing Global Poverty

To eradicate poverty, it's important to address both its effects and its root causes. This list, in no particular order, showcases groups extending their hands to help the underprivileged raise their economic status for a brighter tomorrow.

First up, at #1, we have Western Center on Law & Poverty. This organization was formed in 1967 by a group of attorneys and legal scholars, who believed that low-income Californians deserve proper representation.

Western Center is focused on providing access to justice, financial security, health care, housing, and community stability to impoverished families throughout California. It collaborates with federal, state, and local agencies to protect and expand the rights of its constituents, conducts on-site training and webinars for legal aid attorneys, and more.

Up at #2 is the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1989, it focuses on the areas of fair housing, school diversity, and environmental justice, and works with a national network of researchers, attorneys, educators, and more.

The council engages in a range of public education activities and promotes research-based advocacy strategies, to help address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color.

Coming in at #3, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative is an economic research and policy center that was established in 2007. It aims to build and advance a more systematic economic framework, focusing on the five missing dimensions of data: quality of work, empowerment, physical safety, the ability to go about without shame, and psychological well-being.

OPHI is involved in survey design and testing, data collection, training and mentoring, and advising. It holds seminars, workshops, and events, and collaborates with universities, research networks, governments, and international organizations, creating tools that can be used in tackling poverty.

Next up, at #4, is Apnalaya. Founded in 1972 by Tom Holland, the then Australian Consul General in Mumbai, the charity works with the urban poor, enabling access to basic services, healthcare, education, and livelihood.

Apnalaya takes a multi-dimensional approach in teaching people how to help themselves and ensure the provision of civic entitlements through advocacy with the government. The organization collaborates with like-minded groups and creates awareness via the media.

Finally, at #5, we have GALVmed. This organization was incorporated in 2005 and aims to make livestock vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics accessible and affordable to those who rely on domesticated animals for a living.

The group is focused on developing products to meet the needs of small-scale farm animal producers, and passing them over to others to manufacture and distribute. The organization's goal is to protect livestock, in order to help improve human lives.