Turning off the Lights

Stephen Thomas, Iromi Ruana Rajepakse

The World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) could threaten services and projects specifically aimed at or managed by poor communities. This book explains the nature of that threat, taking community-run electricity schemes in Sri Lanka as an example. It will help to g...

Urban Futures

Nabeel Hamdi

Poverty and economic growth are intrinsically related but are not always synonymous. Human wellbeing is as important to economic growth as growth is to wellbeing. Poverty is multi-dimensional, encompassing both income and non-income related factors. Mobility, aspiration, dignity, respect, knowledge,...

You Pay for What You Get

Markus Arbenz

Four case studies from ex-Soviet Union, Asia and Africa illustrate how development projects put their claim into practice.

Beyond Access

Sheila Aikman, Elaine Unterhalter

In a world in which poverty, social prejudice and poor-quality provision cause an estimated 100 million girls to drop out of school before completing their primary education, it is not enough for governments to pledge themselves to increase girls' access to school. This book presents a vision of a t...

Bridging Research and Policy in Development

Julius Court

This is a crucial book for international development researchers who want the lessons of their research converted into changes in government and aid agency policy. International policy making is extremely complex and little studied. This book reviews what we do already know and provides a concept...

Building Bridges with the Grassroots

Otto Ruskulis

Theo Schilderman

About one billion people now live in the slums of the towns and cities of the developing world. And their number is set to double by 2030, unless concerted efforts are made to the contrary. Slums provide an unhealthy and dangerous living environment, and improving the living conditions of slum dwell...

Communities and Communication

Patrick Wakely, Elizabeth Riley

The current paradigm of partnership in urban development and management is widely used and accepted but there is little understanding of what makes partnerships work or fail. The broad premise that underpins this book is that a partnership is a relationship based on an agreement to share both benefi...

Connecting the First Mile

Surmaya Talyarkhan, David Grimshaw, Lucky Lowe

This paper summarizes the findings from a research project conducted by ITDG and Cranfield School of Management (Bedford, UK) into using ICTs (like the Internet or mobile telephony) to share information with people at grassroots level - "connecting the first mile".

Dictionary of Water Engineering

K.D. Nelson

The Dictionary of Water Engineering provides an essential, up-to-date and economically priced source of information on all aspects of water engineering and technology. Emphasis is placed on the needs of poorer communities and on the importance of environmental sustainability. The entries cover the m...

Electricity Services in Remote Rural Communities

Teodoro Sanchez

This book describes the design and use of a particular management model for electricity services in isolated rural communities. This model was designed with the clear objective of efficient financial and technical management, taking into account the social and economic environment and the committed...