Search these pages to explore a selection of our directory of activities. You can use the keyword search and filter buttons to discover how we are addressing each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the five priorities in our Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement Plan. You can also filter activities by location and function.
searching subjects: Prosperous communities
Our Alliance Manchester Business School has partnered with regional organisations and authorities to create the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter, which aims to advance decent work and employment standards across our city region. We have also joined campaigns with Citizens UK to highlight our role as a living wage organisation.
Our Work and Equalities Institute is providing the evidence base to inform global employment debates and policies. Research in three key areas is undertaken: minimum wage and collective bargaining; the gender pay gap; and precarious work. This work is shaping guidance produced by international policy bodies and national policies of multiple countries, and is also providing evidence for European trade unions in their interactions with EU and national policymakers.
Our Alliance Manchester Business School hosts The Productivity Institute – a new UK-wide £32 million research organisation exploring what productivity means for business, for workers and for communities, how it is measured and how it contributes to increased living standards and wellbeing. It will help pinpoint the causes of stagnation in UK productivity and lay foundations for sustained and inclusive productivity growth by directly informing government policies and business strategies to improve productivity.
We work in collaboration with Association des Guides du Rwanda (AGR) to provide volunteer opportunities for students to help girls and young women in Rwanda acquire skills for their development and become agents of positive change.
Our research into agriculture and apparel sectors in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and collaboration with three large UK retailers, has led to more than 390,000 workers in value chains in low- and middle-income countries directly benefiting from the implementation of gender-equitable strategies. More than a million workers have been indirectly advantaged through opportunities for women to advance to leadership positions and new strategies from companies that have the potential to reach 33 million workers in 180 countries.
#BeeWell is an initiative established in Greater Manchester in 2019 by our University, Anna Freud, The Gregson Family Foundation, and Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The programme aims to explore young people’s opinions on wellbeing and the ways in which it can be improved. The findings inform activity across Greater Manchester, with schools, voluntary sector organisations and children’s services working closely with young people to interpret and act on the results.
Our student-run, campus zero waste shop, Want Not Waste, holds a community fridge. This contains food from unsold meals offered by local business and surplus raw ingredients provided by our catering outlets. Stocking these items combats local food waste while helping to tackle food insecurity within our own university community.
Since its inception in 2013, the UK’s first student-led and campus-based foodbank, Manchester Central Foodbank, has helped thousands of local citizens with food insecurity. This included developing an online store and delivery system for vulnerable and isolated people, and providing 70,000 meals during the pandemic in 2020.
Our Global Development Institute has examined whether cultivating in groups – by voluntarily pooling land, labour, funds and skills and sharing costs and benefits – enables small farmers to create larger, more profitable enterprises in South Asia and beyond. The research in Kerala, south India showed that carefully structured group farming created sustainable, food-secure livelihoods for vast numbers of poor women farmers.
Our academics are exploring the impact of austerity on reproduction. The project uses a range of creative activities and interviews with women from areas in the north-east, where there are significant socio-economic barriers. This project is providing new insights into contemporary austerity and how this may affect childbearing.
Our student community work on a range of projects to tackle extreme poverty and inequality. Love for the Streets was established by two Manchester students to use youth events, content and social media marketing to tackle homelessness in partnership with local charities. Once a Month fights period poverty through public campaigns and providing sanitary products to vulnerable women across Manchester.
The Homeless Healthcare Society helps improve the healthcare of Manchester’s homeless population by raising awareness of the medical inequalities and stigmas faced by homeless patients when accessing healthcare. The aim is to ultimately improve the care provided by tomorrow’s healthcare professionals.
Our Global Development Institute is the UK’s largest university-based postgraduate centre specialising in international development. More than 5,000 students have completed master’s programmes in international development since 2012.
Our Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit was supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to analyse evidence about the scale of poverty and inequality in our city region. It has recommended a range of policies on inclusive growth so that economic prosperity benefits all citizens across Greater Manchester and beyond.
Based in our University’s Students’ Union, the Big Change Society supports people who are homeless by paying for essential items such as home deposits, training courses and clothes for job interviews. The society also signposts students towards the best ways they can get involved with ending homelessness and promoting responsible giving.
We’ve supported more than 4,000 local people into work through our unique partnership with the Manchester Growth Company on the initiative, The Works.
Our Amrita Live-in-Labs Project puts scientific and engineering research to practical use for societal benefit in India, a country that is home to 33% f the world’s poor. For example, students from our Department of Materials designed a smokeless stove for cooking in huts to reduce respiratory problems and developed strategies to educate children in mathematics in Chhattisgarh, a state with one of the poorest rates of educational achievement in India.
Our Everyday Austerity research project in our School of Environment, Education and Development has revealed the impact of austerity policies on everyday life for families and communities in Greater Manchester. As a result, we’ve advised, trained and empowered a wide range of local groups and communities to tackle social injustices resulting from austerity. Our findings were presented in an exhibition that turned peoples’ stories into a series of drawings, photographs, audio excerpts and objects to engage the public and bring these experiences to life.
Our Global Development Institute (GDI) is Europe’s largest research and teaching institute focused on poverty and inequality. The GDI runs the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) Research Centre, which investigates how politics promotes inclusive development and government accountability. Recent research suggests that countries with the highest government capacity can reduce income poverty at twice the speed of countries with the weakest capacity. Spanning 16 countries, our research is deepening the understanding of governance in developing countries, and helping to influence policy and practices and improve people’s lives
Good employment
Influencing international and national employment policies to promote inclusive labour markets
The Productivity Institute
Girl Guides Rwanda remote volunteering
Gender equality in global value chains
#BeeWell
Community Fridge
Manchester Central Foodbank
Creating sustainable livelihoods through group farming
Reproduction and austerity
Student action
Homeless Healthcare Society
International development study programmes
Inclusive growth in Greater Manchester
Big Change Society
The Works
Amrita Live-in-Labs
Everyday Austerity
Global Development Institute
