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Raising a child with learning and developmental disabilities in a low-income setting is challenged by inadequate resources, limited support and poverty. The impacts on caregivers include fatigue, distress and isolation. The purpose of this paper is to report on a programme (2008-2021) that was set up in Kilifi County, Kenya to investigate and address these difficulties.

The programme used mixed methods through a series of interconnected studies, starting with a situation analysis, followed by a home-based intervention where the caregiver served as agent for change using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) methods. This was followed by two community-based inclusive development initiatives: disability awareness training to community groups and empowering self-help groups for caregivers of children growing up with disabilities.

The situation analysis revealed scarce support services for caregivers and children with learning and developmental disabilities, with report of limited resources, inadequate coverage and poor professional practice. A home-based, AAC intervention was associated with improved caregiver well-being, significant positive changes to caregiver perceptions of the child’s communication and some expansion to the child’ social activities. However, questions around sustainability persisted. Disability awareness training led by persons with lived experience of disability showed positive changes to the views, values and attitudes of established community groups. Caregiver participation in self-help groups was associated with their greater personal agency, perceptions of increased social support and reduced severity of child’s disability.

The programme narrative demonstrates a rationalised and evidence-based process for community-based inclusive development that is low cost, culturally acceptable, with potential for sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to understand interest-free microfinance practices in India, identify issues and recommend possible solutions.

To achieve the proposed objectives, Bait-un-Nasr (BuN) Urban Cooperative Credit Society, located in Mumbai, India, is considered for the case study. The study is based on both primary and secondary data. The primary data are collected through questionnaires and secondary data from various sources. Performance of the institution is assessed in terms of growth and sustainability indicators.

It is found that BuN has been successful in providing interest-free microfinance services in India. A few operational issues have been highlighted and possible solutions are recommended. Moreover, it is found that in comparison to the microfinance industry standards, the performance of BuN has been lower.

BuN is evaluated from only growth and sustainability aspects and not from the aspect of the socio-economic impacts of its services on the lives of customers.

This study would become a documented source of interest-free microfinance practices in India. Moreover, the recommendations provided, if implemented, would help BuN in further growth and development.

This study would help create awareness in the society about the practices of interest-free microfinance.

This paper highlights the interest-free microfinance practices in India that have not received the needed attention. The paper also attempts to identify key issues pertaining to interest-free microfinance with possible solutions.

This study investigates both internal and external stakeholders' views on the objectives and measures of performance of Indonesian Islamic microfinance banks (IMFBs).

This study uses a qualitative approach. In-depth interviews were conducted with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders of IMFBs in Indonesia. The primary stakeholders interviewed comprised the board of directors of IMFBs located in several provinces in Indonesia, including rural and urban areas. The external stakeholders were the regulators/supervisors, represented by the Indonesian Financial Services Authority and Sharīʿah advisors of the National Sharīʿah Board as well as Muslim scholars. The data were analysed using CAQDAS, a computer-assisted tool for qualitative analysis.

The objectives of the IMFBs are seen to represent more than profits or economic well-being. Their objectives also comprise spirituality and daʿwah (Islamic propagation). Daʿwah is conducted through the provision of funding and services that are aligned with Sharīʿah (Islamic law), the dissemination of information about Islamic financing, which is based on Islamic values and principles, and the payment of zakat (Islamic alms) and charitable contributions. The measures of performance are considered to be more holistic than those of conventional banks. Profit and growth are deemed important as the means to achieve social well-being objectives.

Better insights into the objectives and measures of IMFBs could be achieved from interviews with other stakeholder categories, such as customers and the community. This could be the focus of future research.

This study added a new discussion to the limited empirical literature on IMFBs by investigating the views of stakeholders on the objectives and performance of IMFBs in Indonesia.

The purpose of this study is to explore communication of hazard-resistant construction techniques after disaster in the absence of outside influence. It further aims to unpack the barriers and drivers in the adoption of knowledge processes to identify strategic recommendations to enlarge adoption of safer construction practices by local construction actors.

This paper is based on an analysis of stakeholders’ perspectives during post-disaster reconstruction in the Philippines in the province of Busuanga after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Data were collected from six communities that received no external housing assistance, analyzing surveys from 220 households, 13 carpenters, 20 key actors coordinating reconstruction or recovery efforts, as well as 12 focus group discussions.

This research argues for a stronger role of governmental agencies, vocational training schools and engineers. Current communication of typhoon-resistant construction knowledge is ineffective to stimulate awareness, understanding and adoption by local construction actors and self-recovering households.

The analysis in this study focuses on a small sample of communities in the west of the Philippines that are not frequently affected by typhoons.

This is one of the few scholarly works in the Philippines focused on adoption of safer construction practices by community-based construction actors when technical housing assistance is absent.

Several indigenous credit and savings schemes have been accredited recently in developing countries for the benefit of households and entrepreneurs alike. Famous among them are the Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) that exist in almost all continents currently. The rapid development of ROSCAs and their varied structures in many countries have been the subject of numerous studies. What has not been thoroughly analysed is the optimum size of these associations and the fact that lending and borrowing is without interest. The aim of this paper is to present a model that would determine the optimum size of ROSCAs and deal with the following issues: how the group size varies with changes in the income level of the members, the demand for the loan, the size of the collected loan and its duration. Further, the question of whether or not lending to the association in return for obtaining larger sums is a violation of the qarḍ (loan) contract is dealt with, and several Sharīʿah compatible formulations are provided.

Economic analysis has been applied to show the optimum size of Qarḍ Ḥasan Associations (QHAs), which are the Sharīʿah-compliant equivalent of ROSCAs, and the Sharīʿah rules of the qarḍ contract to illustrate the legitimacy of group lending.

The major findings of this study are determination of the optimum size of QHAs, the factors that affect the size and suggestion of alternative legal forms for group financing.

Inaccessibility to sources of data to test the hypothesis that has been put forth is the main difficulty encountered when conducting research on the subject.

The paper concludes that the development of informal interest-free ROSCAs in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries is an efficient informal microfinance scheme and that it is compatible with Sharīʿah rules.

The optimum size of ROSCAs and QHAs has been presented in this paper.

Lack of access to credit is commonly held responsible for slow agricultural and rural development in low- and middle-income countries. This paper aims to investigate the contribution of demand- and supply-side factors, particularly the role of risk rationing, on credit application and uptake in the case example of Kyrgyzstan.

Toward this aim, the study explores the determinants of credit behavior of 1,738 Kyrgyz sample farm households from 2013 to 2016 waves of the nationally representative “Life in Kyrgyzstan” (LIK) dataset along a hierarchical regression model, differentiating between factors influencing individual demand for credit and factors influencing supply for credit.

The results of our analysis indicate the relative importance of demand-side factors for credit applications, reflecting farmers' perceived risk of credit default and loss of collateral. Meanwhile, supply-side factors, such as real credit constraints and collateral requests, have a stronger influence on credit uptake rates and overall loan sums. These findings highlight the role of risk rationing for agricultural investment, suggesting a stronger focus of development policy on improving risk-sharing mechanisms for farmers, e.g. by developing the agricultural insurance sector.

The paper contributes novel evidence on the role of risk rationing in shaping the demand for formal credits for increasing agricultural and rural investment in low-income transition economies. Previous research has mostly focused on the role of credit supply, thus underrating the potential contribution of individual risk attitude, risk experience and risk sharing.

In societies with strong presence of Islam, Islamic instruments with more scope for fairness and equity can be innovatively harnessed to play an increasing role in the development process and poverty alleviation schemes. Poor smallholder farmers dominate agricultural production in many developing countries and contribute a significant portion of global food production. This paper aims to develop a scheme to improve poor smallholder farmers’ vulnerable financial situation through the application of Zakah and Salam contract, using Bangladesh as a case study. Secondary goals are to show the effect of the scheme on food security and relevance to Nigeria.

The authors explore the existing traditional modes of financing available to poor smallholders, identify their challenges and propose an appropriate Islamic financing scheme.

With the Zakah-based Salam forward contract, the proposed scheme would procure food through Institutional Demand to offer interest free financing, fair price and access to new marketing channels and reduce income uncertainty for the rural smallholders. The discussions indicate that the local food security will be enhanced through incentivized farming activities and disbursement of food from the food bank to the Zakah-eligible food insecure local people.

This proposal brings forth a potentially powerful idea that needs further empirical validation.

The religion-based Institutional Demand initiative to promote smallholder agricultural development and social protection is a novel one. The attempt to apply the framework to Nigeria context shows the potential of the framework to generalize for other Muslim developing countries with similar characteristics, especially the poorer agriculture-based countries.

This paper is designed to assess the sustainable value chain approaches for marketing channel development opportunities for agricultural products in coastal Bangladesh to combat climate change through an approach of community-based adaptation options.

The study was designed to select the potential value chain candidate and to analyze and establish a value chain map to benefit the crop farmers. In this connection, the resources of the whole context were evaluated. The approach uses few tools to generate three outputs, the last of which are the final list of value chains selected for in-depth assessment to design interventions as community-based adaptation practices of the study to combat climate change in the study areas.

The study demonstrated that the difference in the institutional circumstances of the end markets of the agriculture products is connected to the different categories of harmonization and control of the facilitating environment throughout the supply chains. National and local networks improve the value chain in terms of the value addition of the agriculture products, technology improvement, market access and profitability of the products. Strengthening the weak financial structure, focus more on formal financial systems and resolving sociocultural and climate change-induced hazard concerns are the major concerns on the development of value chains in the countries. Apparently, guarantee for good governance, checking illegal and unregulated market contexts, proper mitigation measures to climate change are some paramount important issues for the sustainable management of livelihood, yield, income and development.

All kinds of stakeholders of the agriculture product value chain should focus on competitiveness and productivity and look for and exploit multiple ways to add value once initial success has been attained with a single deal. Ensuring sustainability within the value chains is an important feature to cater to the challenges and changing demands of the age.

The study will help to established a sustainable value chain approach in response to climate change, which process will help to existent opportunities for firms to manage the issue of climate risk by codeveloping and employing adaptation options that may be more preferred or accepted by consumers across the entire chain for the sustainable management of livelihood, yield, income and development.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some lights on the process of mission drifting or abandoning poverty objective by Islamic microfinance institutions (IMFs). The paper investigates whether the extensive use of banking logic changes IMFs, from focusing on both development and financial objectives to only considering sustainability as their primary mission.

This paper adopts mixed methods by analyzing 7,200 microfinance data from Microfinance Exchange Market and reviewing annual reports and websites of 25 IMFs to examine their vision and mission statements and other related information.

The finding shows Islamic microfinance has not changed, despite increasing adoption of financial or banking performance measures. However, size and age of the institutions may affect the outcome in the future. The authors find that smaller microfinance institutions maintain genuine objective to serve the poor, as the grow larger they would be more inclined toward sustainability objectives.

The research is limited on the sample size as data on Islamic microfinance globally is limited. However, the paper looked at the global data rather than local data to compensate for this limitation. Future study would be further taking the study through qualitative methods to support the study.

This paper aims to shed some lights on the process of mission drifting or abandoning poverty objective by IMFIs. The paper investigates how has the extensive use of financing logic has changed IMFIs from focusing on both development and financial objectives to only considering sustainability as their primary mission. Arun and Hulme (2009) argued that the interaction of multiple logic within microfinance institutions, i.e. financial vs social, could pose some serious management dilemmas within microfinance institutions. Further, commercialization puts pressure on the field staffs to achieve financial targets and often neglect their poverty outreach mission to the poor. The well-known crisis in Andhra Pradesh, India where clients of microfinance institutions committed suicide after being shamed by field officers who tried to collect payments of loans (Mader, 2013; Taylor, 2011), provides a powerful case of the impact of financialization to microfinance clients.

Mainland Tanzania has seen two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in its social and economic structures, whilst the country continues to grapple with persisting gender inequalities. This article examines Tanzania's social policy developments from a gender perspective. The authors analyse the level, reach and quality of social policy delivery to working-age women across the areas of health policy, social protection and employment policy during 2000–2021.

The article draws on qualitative research deploying the scoping review method. The data consist of diverse secondary materials, including academic publications, government policy documents, relevant statistics and other types of “grey” literature.

Tanzania has made significant advancements in the legal frameworks around welfare provision and has instituted increasingly gender-responsive government policy plans. The health and social protection sectors, in particular, have witnessed the introduction of large-scale measures expanding social policy implementation. However, social policy delivery remains two-tiered, with differences in provisions for women in the formal and informal sectors.

Social policy delivery and implementation have increased and diversified in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the new millennium, with a growing integration of gender-specific policy objectives. However, limited social policy scholarship has focused on the gendered effects of broader social policy models in SSA. The article remedies the concomitant knowledge gaps by examining various social policies and their impacts on working-age women in Mainland Tanzania. The authors also engage with the theoretical welfare regime literature and present an analytical framework for gender-sensitive assessment of emerging social policy models in the Global South.