This article outlines one of the activities organised by an international Evangelical faith-based development organisation (FBDO) working in the Kibera informal settlement, an area that attracts large numbers of development practitioners, including FBDOs and Christian missionaries. Some Pentecostal and Evangelical perceptions of entrepreneurship are outlined, which are then related to current theoretical descriptions of the role of global Pentecostalism in improving livelihoods and well-being. It is suggested that local conditions in Kibera mean that little improvement in terms of livelihoods is possible. Therefore local Pentecostal adherents tend to utilise their faith and church activities in attempts to survive conditions as they are, rather than in seeking to transform them. It is suggested that members of Pentecostal churches in Kibera seek to express, understand and control, but not change, their challenging lifeworlds through their religious ideas and activities.

Writing on the relationships between religion and development has blossomed in the last decade or so, after years of relative neglect. Like any field of social enquiry that is both underdeveloped and closely linked to the interests of advocates and practitioners, the work available to date has encountered various pitfalls. These are outlined, to pinpoint the contribution that this special issue makes to the rapidly-evolving body of research on religion in the context of development. The paper then provides an editorial overview of the themes and papers in the special issue, which includes both research-based articles and practical notes.

In developing areas of the world, where local people's understanding of germ theory and water and sanitation problems is not complete, 3Mᵀᴹ Petrifilmᵀᴹ can act as an important visual aid for development workers in order to educate people about water and sanitation topics. The present article gives an example of how 3Mᵀᴹ Petrifilmᵀᴹ has been used to help establish a baseline understanding of water and sanitation problems in rural Mali, and motivated improved water and sanitation practices.

One of the major promises of decentralisation is that it brings popular participation and accountability to local governance, making local government more responsive to citizens' desires and more effective in delivering services. Acknowledging the potential of decentralisation in improving delivery of basic services, the present article uses primary data to demonstrate that higher availability of urban basic services (UBSs) is associated with higher levels of citizen dissatisfaction. Policymakers need to adopt a comprehensive set of reform policies – strengthening the organic link between urban residents and municipalities, exploring alternative service delivery options, etc. – to improve the delivery of UBSs.

Development agencies are faced with the challenge of measuring and reporting the results of their contributions to promote equitable and sustainable development. Part of this is that agencies forecast ambitious development goals and then commit themselves to measuring what they could not have achieved by the end of their programmes or projects. The present article uses the Ethiopian government's fertiliser extension programme as an example of defining the context, scope, and timeframes for result-measurement exercises. The Ethiopian experience suggests that it is possible to develop context-specific methods that allow the measurement of practical and measurable results.

Very little is known about the ecology of the refugee parenting experience in pre-resettlement contexts. This article presents research that is part of a larger study seeking to explain why refugee parents are appearing in the South Australian child protection system. In particular, the research highlights the need for parenting education as an early intervention. The study's findings also point to the need for universal definitions of the terms ‘child welfare’, ‘child protection’ and ‘child maltreatment’ by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, its implementing partners, practitioners and researchers in order to reflect better the receiving nation systems of child welfare.

This paper examines the position and role of religious organisations within a wider range of civil society organisations (CSOs) in two districts in Tanzania. We argue that where development agendas are externally generated and civil society is driven by supply-side factors, religious organisations are not very different from other CSOs. Whether faith adherence and religious values and beliefs lead to different kinds of development outcomes is open to question, partly because most Tanzanians claim some kind of religious motivation and partly because there are probably very few institutional settings in which religious attitudes do not have some kind of influence.

The Indian healthcare sector provides ripe ground for development as access to high-quality and timely medical diagnosis remains unrequited among its vast rural populace. With an acute shortage of doctors in rural areas, medical diagnostic software has been created as a surrogate, propelling non-physician workers to step in. For diagnostic software to function effectively, it is paramount to identify the user. Using an intended pilot programme of RightChoice software in the central Himalayas, the present article focuses on the political and economic complexities involved in identifying users of such software.

Food security is a key aspect of human development. The present article explores the shortcomings of agricultural interventions in two districts in eastern Uganda. Our study shows that these interventions have achieved only minor successes in relieving rural poverty and strengthening food security. Programmes that support prominent farmers with the aim of commercial development are unlikely to touch the poor. Food insecurity is related to the gendered division of agricultural work, control of cash income and the cycle of planting, harvest and crop sales for poor farmers. The present article recommends a set of effective subsistence-based strategies for poor farmers with an emphasis on the interests of women.

Drawing on empirical data from a community-based study with children and adults in rural Peru, the paper analyses the everyday experiences of a conditional cash transfer programme, called ‘Juntos’. The findings show that social protection programmes like Juntos address certain child vulnerabilities by making eligibility for their cash transfers conditional on behaviour-related to child protection-related such as health check-ups and school attendance. However, there are other aspects of children's well-being that are not being considered, such as experiences of violence and exclusion. This paper discusses both opportunities and challenges for cash transfer programmes to play a greater role in child protection.