Credible Future - Can Micro Loans Make a Macro Difference?

LATIN AMERICA: Enterprising Women Reach Beyond Borders

By IPS Correspondents
Elbe "Beba" Luberto led a quiet, contented life in the Uruguayan countryside, with her husband, three children, five grandchildren, and a house that occupied all of her time. But things changed radically when she and a group of other women in the community formed a farming cooperative 18 years ago.

DEVELOPMENT: "Middlemen" Banks Lack Accountability, Report Finds

By Emad Mekay
Intermediary banks and financial institutions that borrow from multilateral international banks to lend to local projects pose a threat to environmental and social standards around the world and should be monitored more closely, says a new report from the World Resources Institute in Washington.

HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: AIDS Policy for Subsistence Farmers Underwhelms

By Kristin Palitza
Subsistence agriculture makes for a hard life, particularly in areas that are badly hit by HIV. Put farming and AIDS together, add drought or disease, and you have a diabolical mixture of circumstances.

ENVIRONMENT DAY: Bioenergy Touted to ”Green” Cities and Aid Farmers

By Stephen Leahy
A pellet of dried grass. Not much to look at, but the tiny ball symbolises a technology that experts say can help meet our surging demand for energy while curbing poverty and global warming especially in developing countries where vast rural populations with no access to electricity and rapidly-expanding mega cities vie for material resources.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES-BRAZIL: ”Lula frustrated our expectations”

By Mario Osava
At age 28, Jecinaldo Barbosa Cabral is leader of an association of Amazonian indigenous organisations, COIAB, the largest group of its kind in Brazil.

FINANCE-SOUTH AFRICA: Rare Insights Into Poor People’s Bank

By IPS Correspondents
Xolile Mjobo is a highly respected undertaker, which provides a good business in the midst of one of the world's most severe AIDS epidemics.

ENVIRONMENT: Indian Farmers Win Battle Against GM Cotton

By Sanjay Suri
Indian farmers have won a small battle against GM crops by establishing simply that they can be less productive than normal crops.

NEPAL: For Squatters, Kathmandu Carries Scent of Reform

By Marty Logan
Crossing a bridge over the Bagmati River the women inside the tiny three-wheeled taxi or ''tempo'', clamp their shawls over their faces to block the stench of the polluted water.

BRAZIL: Landless March Biggest Ever to Reach Brasilia

By IPS Correspondents
Close to 12,000 landless peasants wrapped up a 17-day, 200-km march with a series of demonstrations in the Brazilian capital, which were marred by violence when riot police clashed with protesters, leaving several dozen wounded.

BRAZIL: No Rest During Struggle for Promised Land

By Mario Osava
The thousands of pieces of clothing hung up to dry on ropes strung between tents reflect the hard work still being done on this "day of rest" during the National March for Agrarian Reform in Brazil.

BANGLADESH: To Be Small Is Beautiful and Helps Beat the Poverty Trap, Too

By IPS Correspondents
Bangladesh is a paradox. While beset with poverty and institutional failures, it maintains an economic growth rate of five percent, well above the average for developing countries.

DEVELOPMENT: Women Placed at Heart of New Projects

By IPS Correspondents
A leading development agency has taken several measures to help bring women into the heart of new projects.

DEVELOPMENT: Microcredit Makes Strong Inroads in Latin America and Caribbean

By IPS Correspondents
Reaching 75 percent of the world's poor families with microloans and helping to boost the incomes of those living in extreme poverty were the two major challenges assumed at the regional microcredit summit for Latin America and the Caribbean.

ARGENTINA: ‘Piquetero’ Groups Take Chunk Out of Social Assistance Payments

By Marcela Valente
Rain or shine, Soledad, with her toddler in her arms, never misses a roadblock or "piquete" - but not because she is fanatically devoted to the protests staged by the movement of unemployed workers to which she belongs.

RIGHTS: Help Is On the Way to Assist Swaziland’s Elderly Financially

By James Hall
Gogo (granny) Dube, a small but spry white-haired woman of 67, has had to raise five grandchildren since her daughter and son-in-law, the children's parents, died of AIDS-related illnesses within months of each other in 2000.

DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: The High Cost of Death Hurts the Living

By IPS Correspondents
South Africa's first comprehensive look at the financial lives of poor families has uncovered a fascinating world where things are not always as they appear.

DEVELOPMENT-UGANDA: Little by Little, Week by Week

By Evelyn Kiapi
Uganda is one of Africa's rare success stories in the fight against AIDS, having reduced its HIV prevalence from 30 per cent in the early 1990s to six per cent today. However, the pandemic has still taken a toll on the East African country, causing almost two million children to be orphaned.

DEVELOPMENT: Formal Land Titles Necessary But Not Sufficient

By Humberto Márquez
As soon as they purchased land with a collective loan, a group of peasant farmers in San Francisco, in Ecuador's northern Andean department (state) of Imbabura, divided the property into small plots for each family.

DEVELOPMENT: Access to Land Essential to Eradicating Poverty, Experts Say

By Humberto Márquez
Family farming can be a more efficient means of producing food and promoting development than large-scale agricultural operations, Brazilian expert Edson Teófilo told participants at the International Land Coalition Global Assembly currently underway in this eastern Bolivian city.

BOLIVIA: Land Conflicts – Another Source of Tension

By Humberto Márquez
"We are demanding legal title to our land. We want to preserve it as we see fit, with its plants, water and animals, and we are going to fight in a constituent assembly for that," Anacleto Supayabe, an indigenous community leader in Bolivia, where land disputes rage, told IPS.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Moving from Top-Down to Bottom-Up No Easy Process

By Evelyn Kiapi
Urban poverty has a familiar face - the image of the overcrowded and garbage-strewn slum. It may surprise many to hear, then, that three quarters of the world's poorest people - about 900 million persons - live in rural areas.
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