Uncharted Territory

Sara Pantuliano

Disputes over land often start conflicts; and land is often a key issue when refugees and internally displaced people attempt to return home when the conflict is over. Access to land affects people’s choice to return and their prospects of recovery. Yet humanitarian agencies largely neglect these wi...

Recycling Plastics: Starting a business

An introduction to plastic recycling looking at the reasons for recycling and the practicalities of small-scale businesses.

Serpentine Solar Water Heating: Guidelines for Fabrication

The Serpentine is a solar thermal collector developed as part of a low cost water heating system by the AIDG for households in Xela, Guatemala.

Strawberry Flavoured Jam

Strawberry flavoured jam can be made from ash gourd and artificial strawberry flavouring.

Coffee Processing

This fact sheet describes the types of coffee, and the techniques and equipment needed for small-scale coffee production.

Mud as a Mortar

Clay is the inherent binder of soils which are used in building. Such mortars are generally used with adobe and compressed soil blocks.

Sugar production from Sugar Cane

This brief describes the process of sugar production, explaining yields, crushing, juice treatment, juice boiling and cleanliness.

The Poor and their Money

Stuart Rutherford

Sukhwinder Arora

The Microfinance revolution is usually considered to have been led by the NGOs, donor agencies, and more recently banks who offer poor people financial services. But what can we learn from the ways that poor people already manage their money? What are the essential elements that they prize so much t...

Microfinance Self-Help Groups in India

Frances Sinha

Self-Help Groups (SHGs), a means of reaching rural women with savings and credit services, have taken off dramatically in India, where an estimated 25 million women are members. Their benefits are social as well as economic: SHGs encourage women to become active in village affairs, or take action ag...

Fuelling Economic Growth

Michael Graham, Jean Woo

The private sector is playing an increasingly important role in the funding of scientific research. As public sector research declines in the countries of the north and the south, research and development carried out by the private sector becomes more important for innovations that have economic pot...