Social sector

Release of the Poor Through Education (ROPE) is a small development organization operating in a rural area of Tamil Nadu, Southern India. ROPE has chosen to focus and concentrate its efforts on upgrading the education, health and quality of life of the 5000 people resident in six small villages, as well as a nearby refugee village. This paper considers the rationale for the project, noting the central aim of using indigenous knowledge and skills to develop a self-reliant socioeconomic system. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund (TPAF) has been working in the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China since 1998 to increase the income and assets of rural Tibetans. From the beginning TPAF recognised that high morbidity and mortality were a constraint on efforts of rural Tibetans to improve livelihoods. Early interventions to train township doctors and midwives were not sustainable.

A conference of health-rights activists was held in Nicaragua in 1991, the theme of which was `Health Care in Societies in Transition'. The participants, in response to concerns that health care is being eroded by the widening gap between rich and poor, decided to launch the IPHC `to contribute to the fight for health and social justice'. The Council is an informal network of groups and movements committed to this goal.

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.

This paper introduces the PAEM, a programme working with Christian women in the rural parishes of Santa Barbara, Colon, Comayagua, Intibuca, and Lempira, all departments of Honduras. PAEM has a number of overall aims, which include to bringing together the women of each area as well as other less privileged women from nearby regions. The paper looks at PAEM's methodological contribution; women, communication and culture; challenges and perspectives; and the oral tradition and gender. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Social Diversity.

As part of the global drive to achieve Universal Child Immunisation by l990 (UCI9O), Somalia launched a national immunisation programme for women and children. While access to it improved, actual demand for immunisation remained low. This paper reports the findings of a study to identify the factors influencing acceptance of immunisation in two Somali communities. A retrospective, qualitative approach was adopted to assess individual and community experience both with immunisation and with the immunisation programme.

In September 1990 we became involved with the Centre for the Defence of the Child (CDM) in Brazil, with a view to participating in a survey into the lives of streetchildren that was being conducted by the group. The CDM is a branch of its parent organisation The Young Streetvendors' Association and takes on individual cases of streetchildren providing crisis management with social, psychological and legal support.

This article looks at the experience of privatised urban water supply and sewerage services in Turkey, focusing on the case of three cities that have opted for such privatisation. The article opens with an examination of the management of urban water and sewerage services in Turkey, and explores the development of water services and water policies in local government institutions. The second section introduces case studies of cities that have transferred the management, operation, and maintenance of urban water services to private operators.

Literacy gives people a framework for critical thinking and informed action. A number of peasant farmers' organisations have developed in the wake of economic restructuring in Honduras, Central America. The authors describe and assess the Literacy Programme of the National Office of Agricultural Workers (Central Nacional de Trabajadores del Campo, CNTC), which aims to provide farmers with the tools to have a say in their own futures in the changing social and economic climate of the country.