Aid organizations have their origins in a desire to help the world’s poorest and most marginalized people – but are they reaching these people? Factors are coming together that put pressure on NGOs working in development: the economic crisis, the growing conditionality of aid, and increased competition for funding between NGOs. This creates ‘a perfect storm’ driven by a new language of aid, policies and procedures leaving poor women behind. This book explores how international NGOs are navigating these rapid changes that challenge their role and legitimacy, values, and overall purpose. The writers see a crisis for NGOs as they are pulled further from those they claim to work with; they also explore alternative ways of conceptualizing development, and of bringing about improvements for the most marginalized and increasingly ‘unheard’ women.

This book is essential reading for development practitioners and those working on women’s rights, as well as NGO staff , researchers, and students of development studies.

1.Introduction
Tina Wallace and Fenella Porter
Section One – A Perfect Storm
2.Development from the ground: A worm’s eye view
Stan Thekaekara
3.Evaluation, complexity, uncertainty – theories of change and some alternatives
Chris Mowles
4. Losing Sight of our Purpose?
Suzanne Walker
5. Can girls save the world?
Kate Grosser and Nikki van der Gaag
6. Lost in Translation: Gender Mainstreaming in Afghanistan
Anastasiya Hozyainova
7. Insulating the Developing Classes
Tom Scott-Smith
8. Reconnecting Development Policy, People and History
David Lewis
Section Two – Changing conversations
9. Taking our lead from reality - an open practice for social development
David Harding
10. Women on wheels
Meenu Vadera
11.Too young to be women, too old to be girls: The [Un]Changing Aid landscape and the reality of girls at risk
Seri Wendoh
12. Looking Beyond the Numbers: reducing violence against women in Ghana
Kanwal Ahluwalia
13. From local to global and back again – learning from Stepping Stones
Alice Welbourn
14.Peace Practice Examined
Bridget Walker
15. I don’t know ... and related thoughts
Ashish Shah
16.Apolitical stories of sanitation and suffering women
Deepa Joshi
17.Conclusion
Tina Wallace