Michael Gidney, CEO of In Kind Direct, reflects on what his career in international development has taught him about tackling poverty, the scale of hygiene poverty in the UK, and why meaningful partnerships are essential to creating lasting change.
I’ve spent my career fighting poverty, mostly in international development and working overseas. What brought me to In Kind Direct was the scale of poverty here in the UK.
Today, around 14 million people are living in poverty across the UK. To me, that is a scandal, and I wanted to be part of the solution.
One aspect of poverty that remains particularly hidden is hygiene poverty: when people cannot afford the basic products they need to keep themselves clean and well. Research from In Kind Direct shows that more than 9 million people are experiencing hygiene poverty, including the equivalent of four children in every classroom.
The consequences go far beyond not having access to shampoo or laundry detergent.
Children may go to school in dirty uniforms, wash their hair with soap, skip games or miss school altogether. Hygiene poverty affects physical health, but it can also undermine mental wellbeing, confidence and people’s ability to participate fully in society.
What international development can teach us
Coming to In Kind Direct after a career in international development has also made me think about what we can learn from approaches to poverty elsewhere.
One idea that has particularly struck me is the principle of “leave no one behind”, which sits at the heart of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
It is a familiar call to action in international development. But why don’t we hear it more often when we talk about poverty in the UK?
If we applied that principle here, we would actively seek out the people and communities falling through the social safety net. Civil society, business and government would work together to understand where people are being left behind and what needs to change.
Meeting today’s need while changing tomorrow
At In Kind Direct, we think about tackling hygiene poverty in two ways.
The first is responding to the need that exists today. We work with 9,000 charitable organisations across the UK, reaching nearly a million people every week. Through partnerships with businesses, we’re able to get essential products to the organisations and people who need them.
But we know the need is greater. So alongside meeting immediate need, we have to think about what needs to change for tomorrow.
That means building meaningful partnerships with government and making the case for hygiene poverty to be recognised within anti-poverty policy. It also means working with more companies so that, collectively, we can reach more people.
For me, partnership needs to be a strategy. No single sector can solve poverty alone.
For more than 30 years, In Kind Direct has built deep relationships with some of the UK’s biggest brand owners and retailers, alongside a network of thousands of frontline charitable organisations. That network gives us an extraordinary insight into how people are experiencing poverty and what they need.
But partnerships offersomething else too. It allows you to convene people with very different expertise around a common problem. You can identify what works, understand the impact and begin to build momentum.
Our role is not only to distribute essential products to communities but to bring business, charitable organisations and partners together to tackle the causes and consequences of hygiene poverty.
Finding reasons for optimism
One of the challenges of leadership today is simply the scale of the problems in front of us. Given the state of the world, it would be very easy to give up.
What motivates me is the idea that just because we can’t solve everything doesn’t mean we can’t do something.
Every product donated through In Kind Direct is, for me, an act of hope and solidarity, and a vote for a better world. Any individual action may feel small, but when thousands or millions of those actions come together, they become something substantial.
There is a useful leadership lesson in that. We don’t always have to begin by asking whether we can solve the entire problem. Sometimes we need to identify the meaningful step we can take now, understand how it contributes to a bigger ambition, and bring others with us.
Ending hygiene poverty would enable more people to participate fully in society and fulfil their potential. And that ultimately enriches all of us.
But no organisation can achieve that alone. In Kind Direct already reaches nearly a million people each week, but we know collaboration needs to go much further.
We are working to build an alliance to end hygiene poverty. If your organisation is tackling poverty, can help us address hygiene poverty , or simply wants to be part of that ambition, we’d love to work together.