Social capital contributes to the alleviation of poverty but evidence on how to strengthen it remains scarce. This article describes strategies to strengthen social capital developed by a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and women as part of a development programme in rural Bangladesh between 2006 and 2012. The NGO and the women involved leveraged bonding (familial), bridging (peers) and link...

Technical assistance (TA) has a long and varied history as a development practice. It initially emerged as a set of ‘hard’ programs, tools, and technologies delivered to developing countries by imported First World experts, typically in the agricultural and resource sectors. Later, in response to critical and antidevelopment theories, TA morphed into its ‘soft’ version, attempting to empower ma...

Cath volunteers with the PONT Mbale (www.PONT-mbale.org) link and chairs their primary care committeewhich is embedded in a community to community partnership between Rhondda Cynon Taf in SouthWales and a district in Uganda called Mbale. Since 2005,PONThave trained60operational level health workers (OHWs) across three nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), 450 community health workers (CHWs) acr...

Understanding the way economists formulate answers to these questions can be helpful to those working on FP/RH programs in two ways. First, it can help them design better policies. Although other policy frameworks may also promote better public policy in the health sector, the standard economic policy framework offers a clear and compelling way to think about many health sector policies. Second...