Methods

Institutional care for children separated from their family (for whatever reason) continues to be the first choice of governments of developing countries. The long-term consequences of institutionalisation can be severe and in 1991, Save the Children Fund (UK) (SCFUK) initiated a research programme to examine the experience SCF and its partners have had of working with such children throughout Africa and Asia. The author cautiously advocates adoption, where possible, as a viable alternative to residential care.

In real development, information can sometimes be more important than funding, but has to be accessible and appropriate for it to work. Field-level development can be frustrating and difficult; the mass of information may be overwhelming as well as limited in practical detail or real application. There is often a limited institutional memory and therefore a lack of history. This article seeks ways of dealing with the problem and examines information flows to the south and suggests that they should be traded rather than given as overseas aid.

Cooperatives in general are considered to be in crisis, dominated by self-centered and short-sighted outsiders seeking power. The Primary Agricultural Cooperatives (PACs) in India, which were considered to be the nucleus of rural life, have lost their values and character and appear to have nothing to do with the people whom they were intended to benefit. This is due to: the PACs' failure to recycle credit effectively; their failure to become self-supporting; and intervention and interference in the form of State partnership. The three factors are closely interrelated.

The MOC (Movement for Community Organisation) is an advisory centre for community organisations in the Feira de Santana region of north-east Brazil. Oxfam (UK and Ireland) has provided funds towards their work since 1972, and in 1990/91 commissioned a Brazilian institution to conduct an evaluation.

A visit to a number of small enterprise and income generation projects supported under the ODA's Joint Funding Scheme in Zimbabwe and Kenya has raised a series of key points which have wider implications for practitioners and donors. The paper discusses each point and makes nine `recommendations' for NGOs and donors who support them. While the general benefits of NGOs - such as their relatively low cost, ability to reach the poor and innovativeness - is affirmed, the challenge facing NGOs is to progress further from this base.

This article reviews experiences of implementing empowerment interventions in Tanzania. Data are based on field visits to programmes, projects, and organisations involved in implementing empowerment interventions in various regions in the country. These visits involved key informant interviews, sample surveys, and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with farmers. The review highlights the perceptions of empowerment at project staff and practioner/beneficiary levels, as well as the approaches used by various organisations/projects in implementing empowerment activities.

The main purpose of extension work is to assist and encourage learning, and current thinking on the way adults learn suggests that the social context in which the learning takes place and the attitudes of the target group are as integral to their learning capacity as effective communication. The importance of learners' capacity for engagement with the subject matter, and the ability to draw out this capacity, should be more prominent when training extension workers.

The ultimate objective of any AIDS/HIV intervention project is to reduce the spread of AIDS by promoting safer sexual behaviour. It is misleading to evaluate individual projects in terms of their success in achieving this because behavioural changes are influenced by a range of external factors. When measuring success, then, indicators should be carefully chosen to assess real changes in attitude; for example, measuring the likelihood that sex-workers make use of condoms, rather than simply monitoring the number of contraceptives distributed.

Understanding local variability in context and mobilising local participation to define development agendas are widely accepted development strategies. There remain, hoUnderstanding local variability in context and mobilising local participation to define development agendas are widely accepted development strategies. There remain, however, significant challenges to the systematic and effective inclusion of local communities and households.

This article outlines a comprehensive approach to facilitating the transfer of research into practice. It encompasses three main issues of importance: activities should be seen as part of a long-term endeavour rather than isolated one-off events; there are many audiences which may make use of the research findings in various ways; and there are many modes in which the process can be facilitated.