Practical Notes

Partnerships can achieve results but they do not develop smoothly.  Members must explore their differences before they can perform well together.  Some agencies look inwards at their own priorities and expect their partners to follow them.  This leads to a blend of cooperation and competition.  Other organisations turn outwards and look for partners who can contribute to shared results.  They see themselves as others seen them.  They do not look back to make sure that others are following.  This leads to a blend of mutual respoect and reciprocity which is

This study on the impact of fair trade relies on new field data from coffee and banana cooperatives in Peru and Costa Rica, including a detailed assessment of its welfare effects by comparing FT farmers with non-FT farmers as a benchmark.

Experience from adaptive and community-based resource management suggests that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change. El Niño phenomena are increasingly signaled in advance of their onset. We argue that it is beneficial to heed warnings of potential harm and to intervene in society to possibly avert extreme negative ecological and social impacts which can trigger socio-political stress and widespread human suffering.

Smallholder farmers in developing economies face a range of marketing and exchange problems. This article concerns the organisation of vegetable markets in Ghana, in which transactions are characterised by uncertainty, mistrust and undeveloped buyer-seller relationships. It recommends adopting written standard form contracts to improve buyer-seller exchange and suggests key contractual features.

This paper evaluates the pertinence of interventions sponsored by aid agencies that seek to meet the security needs of women in post-reconstruction Rwanda. Personal security, economic security, and socio-political security are used as the main methodological reference marks and indicators. The information and data used in the paper were gathered during several visits to Rwanda in 2001 and 2002. The study reveals that efforts have brought about positive impacts on the lives of women.

This paper draws on five case studies to explore potential benefits and barriers to horizontal networking to promote impact monitoring and assessment of microfinance. Its main aim is to stimulate further discussion of this issue, but it also draws tentative conclusions about factors likely to contribute towards success. In particular, experience from Honduras suggests that network organisations can work most effectively when they facilitate wider use of impact assessment (IA) activities already piloted by a lead member of the network.

The adoption of participatory approaches has become virtually de rigueur in rural development projects, if only to satisfy donor demands for evidence of participation. Often, however, PRA and its derivatives are used in an extractive fashion and do not benefit local people as intended. This Practical Note reports on a project in Ethiopia in which PRA was used.

This paper seeks to understand the human development potential of a lift-irrigation scheme introduced by a development NGO in Western India. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which this micro-level intervention has been able to create conditions for enlarging the choices of the poor. The impact of the intervention, captured at the farm and household level through both conventional and PRA data, is shown to have enhanced the productivity of the land, resulting in improved food security, higher employment, and a significant reduction in distress migration, especially among women.

Participatory research with well established, autonomous farmer groups in Uganda and Ghana examined their viewpoints and priorities concerning agricultural information. In particular, it sought to investigate the ways in which farmers identified new ideas of common interest and to explore how these ideas were shared, modified and sometimes implemented within the group or wider community.

This paper summarises part of a research project undertaken in rural Niger. It aims to provide an insight into the development and working of grassroots organisations and the communities in which they operate. Arising from research conducted in five workshops, which involved almost 160 people from 54 community-based organisations, the metaphors of the baobab and eucalyptus trees were found to have strong cultural associations for the participants and helped explain the importance of long-term and deep-rooted interventions rather than short-term and ephemeral projects.