Islamic Microfinance

Malcolm Harper, Ajaz Ahmed Khan

Microfinance institutions are today reaching hundreds of millions of clients throughout the global South, but the special needs of Muslim borrowers and savers, who wish to avoid any form of fixed interest, are badly served. The purpose of Islamic Microfinance is to introduce readers to the tenets of...

What Works for Africa's Poorest

David Lawson, David Hulme, Lawrence K. Ado-Kofie

Although great strides have been made, Africa still lags behind other parts of the world in the reduction of poverty. We now know that the poorest people rarely benefit from poverty reduction programmes, and this is especially true in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Microfinance programmes, fo...

The Global Child Poverty Challenge

Richard Morgan

Children are the most vulnerable people in the world – but rarely has the impact of poverty on children been addressed as an urgent issue in its own right. The harm that deprivation does to girls and boys as individuals, and the lasting cost of poverty, have received too limited attention. Policies...

Citizen-led Innovation for a New Economy

Alison Mathie, John Gaventa

This collection of eleven cases from Canada and the United States gives expression to the ideal of a new economy based on fairness and environmental sustainability. Grappling with complex problems in their local communities, organized citizens are forging innovation, prying open cracks in the prevai...

Delivering decentralisation

This is an introductory leaflet to the project Delivering decentralization: slum dwellers' access to decision making for pro poor infrastructure services.

Managing Developmental Civil Society Organizations

Richard Holloway

When citizens band together in a civil society organization to effect change for the better, they can be a tremendous force for good. This book is about how to channel people’s enthusiasm most effectively, so that pitfalls are avoided, and goals are attained. The book reviews the variety and differ...

Financial and Market Integration of Vulnerable People

Linda Jones

Smallholder farmers, women earners, young job-seekers, people with disability and the entrenched poor often struggle to sustain themselves or contribute to the wellbeing of their households. Despite years of attempting to address this situation, microfinance and enterprise development programmes hav...

Commercial and Inclusive Value Chains

Malcolm Harper, John Belt, Rajeev Roy

In spite of the current wave of globalization, the majority of the world’s people remain poor, excluded from economic development. The aim of this book is to show that disadvantaged smallholders and other poor people can be included in modern integrated value chains, which are profitable for them, f...

The Business of Doing Good

Anton Simanowitz, Katherine Knotts

Why is it that so many organizations, seeking to do good in the world, miss opportunities to do so – and indeed sometimes exacerbate the very problem they seek to address? The Business of Doing Good reveals six insights for microfinance and other social purpose organizations using the marketplace to...

As Though People Mattered

John Davis, Alan Bollard

Must Britain sink from riches to rags in two generations? Must we pursue indiscriminate growth through unlimited consumption? The essential purpose of economic development and discriminating growth should be to enable all people to live fulfilled lives, and that objective can only be achieved throug...