An Engineer's Guide to Latrine Slabs

Brian Reed

Providing sanitation for all is a major global challenge involving many complex issues. The user of a latrine however, will have more local concerns such as the condition of the latrine slab. This is one of the key components of the most common type of sanitary facility. This booklet highlights the...

Expanding Energy Access in Developing Countries

For centuries, water pumping, food processing, and manufacturing , amongst other productive uses, have been enhanced by the application of mechanical power. Recent technological advances in mechanical power have further enhanced productivity and reduced the drudgery of human labour associated with t...

From Vulnerability to Resilience

Katherine Pasteur

From Vulnerability to Resilience – V2R – is a framework for analysis and action to reduce vulnerability and strengthen the resilience of individuals, households and communities. The framework sets out the key factors that contribute to peoples’ vulnerability, namely, exposure to hazards and stresses...

More People, More Trees

William Critchley

Over 20 years ago, concerned famers’ groups in Kenya and Burkina Faso began to adopt new measures to conserve soil and water and to re-establish trees in their fields. Two videos, Looking after our Land and Building on Traditions, recorded the new participatory approaches for land conservation being...

Gender and the Economic Crisis

Ruth Pearson, Caroline Sweetman

The current global economic crisis is expected to lead to millions more people being pushed into extreme poverty. The effects are profoundly different for women and men, and the existing gender inequalities and power imbalances mean that additional problems are falling disproportionately on those wh...

Sharing the Load

Lisa van Dijk, Joy C. Pritchard, Subir K. Pradhan, Kimberley L. Wells

Promoting the welfare of working animals is important not only for the sake of the animals themselves, but for the livelihoods of their owners. Sharing the Load aims to stimulate collective action among animal-owning communities to improve the health and husbandry of their draught and pack animals,...

Shit Matters

Lyla Mehta, Synne Movik

Sanitation remains one of the biggest development challenges of our time, and a long neglected issue associated with taboos and stigma. Despite growing attention and efforts, many top-down approaches to sanitation have failed, reflecting that simply providing people with a toilet does not necessaril...

Practitioners handbook for establishing community based early warning systems

This Practitioner's Handbook on Community Based Early Warning System is an effort to put together the early warning learning experiences from the field and communities in Nepal for wider uses for establishment of community based Early Warning Systems (EWS) in flood prone areas of Nepal.

The Construction of Timberless House Model

The conflict in Darfur, which most analysts judge to have started in 2003 has had a devastating effect on the region. Many of the internally displaced people (IDPs) who were forced to flee their homes have ended up living in make-shift camps around the major cities such as Alfashir, Algenenina and N...

Seed Multiplication of Improved Open-Pollinated Varieties

Community-based seed multiplication of open-pollinated varieties (OPV) can mitigate against hybrid seed unavailability and its soaring cost thereby increasing access to standard seed for communal areas, especially in drought prone areas.