Using qualitative methods, this article examines savings groups that have been in operation for five to ten years in Tanzania to understand internal and external factors influencing savings group longevity and explore member perception of how long-term participation affected the well-being of their households and children. Although groups did not consistently adhere to best practices, they viewed good leadership, trust, and love as the most important factors for sustainability. Poor loan repayment, low savings rates, and dependence on external support represented the greatest challenges to sustainability. Respondents perceived ongoing positive outcomes across several areas of well-being for their households and children.

The development and well-being of children are important to governments. In Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, policies directing children’s welfare are mostly influenced by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Despite enormous energy devoted to generating policies and guidelines, little attention is given to the rejection of indigenous knowledge on childhood, and its effect on the sustainable implementation of child-focused interventions. This article uses an ethnographic approach to explore rural parents’ attitudes to an NGO intervention on children’s rights to basic schooling, and the illegality of child labour. Based on the study findings, the article discusses lessons for practice.

This study examines the challenge of balancing the social and economic benefits of community-based water supply due to the introduction of water meters. One hundred and fifty-four questionnaires were disproportionately administered to users and 20 in-depth interview discussions were conducted with water stakeholders. Resistance to and destruction of water meters coupled with irregular monthly contributions towards operation and maintenance of the water system was identified. The introduction of water meters is seen by some as a money-making venture contrary to community-driven development norms. Balancing the social and economic benefit of water supply will improve community wellbeing, build resilience and sustainability.

As an informal economic activity, street vending has become an urban phenomenon both in developing and developed countries. This article uses an empirical study to explore the lives, livelihoods, and challenges of street vendors in Chittagong city. It finds that street vending is a viable employment source, meeting most people’s daily needs. However, owing to lack of recognition, necessary facilities, and support, vendors often run their business with risk and uncertainty. The article recommends the inclusion of street-vending businesses into urban planning and economy to improve their lives, business, and city ecology.

This paper analyses the effects of gender and institutional support services on commercialisation patterns of maize by female-headed households (FHHs) and male-headed households (MHHs) in Western Kenya. Using primary household survey data from 297 maize farmers, we estimate a Tobit model and a treatment effect model to assess the determinants and gender-induced differences in commercialisation patterns, respectively. Results show that commercialisation levels of FHHs and MHHs were significantly and variably affected by institutional support services. The exogenous switching treatment effect model showed that the commercialisation intensity gap between MHHs and FHHs is explained by both observable and unobservable characteristics.

This article demonstrates the complex role digital crowdfunding platforms play in non-profit fundraising, exploring the nebulous area they occupy when partnered with NGOs in India. Using data from platforms GlobalGiving and Impact Guru to identify the complicated partnerships between platforms and NGOs, it examines the problematic nature of marketised fundraising models. By advocating competitive and technologised practices, crowdfunding platforms create tensions between themselves and their NGO partners, who are forced to continuously adjust and innovate their fundraising strategies. Given their emphasis on profit generation, this article argues that digital platforms limit their intention to create inclusive fundraising spaces for NGOs.

Research uptake is achieved when research findings are translated into meaningful change in capacity to understand development problems, policies and practice, and funding streams. While there is consensus among those working to prevent violence against women and girls that this is essential, relatively little guidance exists on how to achieve this. We reflect on RU approaches used by the What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls Programme and the dilemmas encountered and navigated. We recommend a nimble and flexible approach, incrementally unfolded; guided by a theory of change, evolving key messages; underpinned by comprehensive communications and capacity development.

Using a multidimensional measure of empowerment that focuses on individual capabilities, the study assesses the role of technology in bridging empowerment gap between male and female decision-makers in the same households. The study found women’s empowerment to be correlated with adoption of production technologies. However, adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is associated with a widening empowerment gap. This is attributable to poor women's capabilities, ownership of, and control of decision-making on technologies. The study recommends that ICT interventions should be introduced in a way that mutually reinforces equitable decision-making between women and men in rural households.

Partnerships between traditional aid institutions and private sector actors have become an accepted feature of the international aid architecture. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges presented by such relationships through an analysis of Girl Hub, an operational partnership between Nike’s philanthropic foundation and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID). Despite both parent organisations sharing a commitment to girl empowerment and economic development, Girl Hub failed to achieve its founders' vision. Ultimately, the influence of the philanthropic organisation was mediated by DfID’s accountability demands and culture clashes between individuals involved in the partnership.

This paper presents an analysis of social mobilisation and community engagement in contexts where traditional relations of power are elite-based and exclusionary. Informed by contemporary critiques of community development, it takes the Pakistan-based Rural Support Programme Network’s (RSPN) “three-tier social mobilisation strategy” as a case study and asks whether and how it has transformed traditional relations of power. The study reveals that despite a strategic focus upon transforming community relations and reducing social inequities, RSPN’s specific mobilisation strategy, in practice, enables traditional elites to exploit newly formed community organisations in ways that reproduce traditional, exclusionary, elite-based relations of power.