We Work at Home

Kate Jehan

A training manual designed to assist organizations or individuals to facilitate the building of independent home-based worker organizations. Home-based working is defined as paid employment in the home or in a building or yard near the home, for example traditional crafts, making clothes and shoes,...

Every Last Drop

Zhu Qiang, Li Yuanhong, John Gould

Over the past two decades a quiet revolution has been taking place in the countryside of China where hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. This book focuses on some of the practical actions and clever use of appropriate technologies which have been at the heart of this posi...

Communicating Financial Management with Non-finance People

John Cammack

Strong financial management skills are essential to promote high standards in international development organizations. Many non-finance people find numbers and financial techniques difficult, however, NGO managers and staff are responsible for sound financial management and without full understandin...

Provocations for Development

Robert Chambers

Do we use obscure or fashionable words to impress our colleagues or win research proposals? Are many of our actions against poverty simple, direct and wrong? Provocations for Development is an entertaining and unsettling collection of writings that questions concepts, conventions and practices in de...

Gender, Roads, and Mobility in Asia

Kyoko Kusakabe

Poor roads and transport infrastructure are key factors in the marginalization of women and other disempowered groups, but there is little understanding of the many ways in which a lack of mobility affects people’s lives. In South-east Asia, huge strides are being made in highway development and reg...

Climate Change and Threatened Communities

A. Peter Castro, Dan Taylor, David W. Brokensha

Global climate change disproportionately affects rural people and indigenous groups, but their rights, knowledge, and interests concerning it are generally unacknowledged. Shifts in precipitation, cloud cover, temperature, and other climatic patterns alter their livelihood pursuits and cultural land...

Sustainable Cities

Mélanie Robertson

As urbanization, environmental degradation, and poverty become increasingly urgent problems, understanding the links between sustainability and poverty reduction is imperative. A sustainable urban future for all requires raising the quality of life of the most vulnerable. Existing at the margins of...

Farmers' Choice

Helene Bie Lilleør, Ulrik Lund-Sørensen

Food security is an urgent international priority. However, agricultural extension methods that relied on imposing centrally-developed technological solutions have been ineffective, since small farmers in developing countries often cultivate marginal lands, working under constraints for which these...

Decentralized Energy Access and the Millennium Development Goals

Gwénaëlle Legros, Kamal Rijal, Bahareh Seyedi

Decentralized, off-grid power supplies such as micro hydropower can be perceived as expensive investments by poor countries like Nepal. Can these investments be justified by the benefits that electricity brings to villages in remote mountainous regions? This book describes research into the developm...

Poor People's Energy Outlook 2012

Access to energy is essential for poor people to earn a decent living, to work their way out of the vicious cycle of poverty and subsistence. Whether you earn off the land, from a small business, through a job in a larger enterprise or through the supply of energy itself, energy is important. Poor P...