Welcome to APLE Collective! This section of the website is where we would like to welcome you. As APLE Collective stands for Addressing Poverty by Lived Experience, our core values sit around being led by lived experience, being grassroots and equality and diversity. If you and / or your group share our values we would love you to join us.
This page introduces who we are, links to our story and you can read here a little about our values and meet some of our members. This welcome page invites you to scroll through the slides below which take you through our values, our aims and the sub-groups that we work in to focus on various aspects of our Collective values.
We meet fortnightly on Tuesday lunchtime and our sub-groups meet regularly too.
We welcome individual and group members. We want all members to feel welcome and to be able to access our meetings so part of our funding is allocated to facilitate access to meetings for people living in poverty.

Our aim is to create a sustainable, grassroots network across the UK to raise awareness of poverty, reduce stigma and work together with others to eradicate it.
We are network that promotes the voice of those with lived experience of poverty but that works collaboratively with others across society to use that voice to affect change. We invite groups that have experience or are led by people who are experiencing poverty to join us and become part of the APLE Collective.
Our Values: As part of the APLE Collective everyone in the network has an equal opportunity to have their voice heard. We;
- Create a supportive space for the coming together of individuals with direct experiences of poverty to build relationships of trust and mutual understanding.
- Build the capacity of individuals with direct experiences of poverty to share their insights through peer support, training and knowledge sharing.
- Work together at a national, regional or local level to promote the voices and influence of those with lived experience of poverty on the decisions that impact them and to raise awareness of and reduce the stigma associated with poverty.
- Respect the dignity of people from all backgrounds and actively seek to promote equality and diversity in our work.
Swipe through the slides below to see more of our core values:
APLE_GOVERNENCE_WRITE_UP__1_“We at Expert Citizens are a small lived experience community interest company. We are passionate about lived experience and APLE’s values are all focused on this, as it’s one of there core values, being supportive, offering training and working with these individuals is what Expert Citizen’s is all about, so to share this with APLE is an amazing feat.”
“APLE is a shared collective of people who have the same commitments and the same core values, commitments to equality and most importantly commitment to the fact that we are all people with lived experience of Poverty, and by that experience we learn and grow together and we learn from each other, we learn from each other’s successes and we grow both individually and collectively from each other’s experiences, I’m so proud and so pleased to be associated with APLE and it’s core values!”.
“What attracted us here at LIFE to the APLE Collective was that there core values sat strongly with our own. Those being led by lived experience, a commitment to equality where there’s a level playing field, learning together, as a collective we learn and grow alongside each other, supporting in a way that is truly inspiring. We are proud and delighted to be a part of the APLE Collective!”

Forming in 2018, we have continuously worked as a collective to address poverty with lived experience through our different projects like The Digital Divide, IDEP and more.
If you’d like to know more about the APLE Collective and our story:

The APLE Collective are looking for new members, We invite groups that have experience or are led by people who are experiencing poverty to join us and become part of the APLE Collective.