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Housing micro‐finance is emerging globally as an important financial activity to help alleviate the housing needs of economically vulnerable people. Micro‐finance institutions (MFIs) planning to include housing product must carefully assess whether they have the management and technical capacity to do so. The purpose of this paper is to give practical guidance to MFIs in adopting the housing programme, in addition to their existing line of micro‐finance services.

The paper gives practical guidance to MFIs adopting the housing programme in addition to the existing line of micro‐finance services and inputs about any market study, profiling the customers, product design, pricing of the product, affordability of the clients, income assessment, loan assessment, operational procedures, risk coping mechanisms and technical backup guidance.

The paper finds that MFIs should also ensure that housing micro‐finance suits their strategy from institutional and financial perspectives.

This paper provides valuable practical guidance to MFIs.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the different modes of species dispersal and the various types of alien species dispersed in the Indian peninsular region and its impact on the eco system and livelihoods.

The paper portrays the various identified alien species, the scale of invasion thereby resulting in biological disaster caused by mankind.

The paper lists the invasive alien species (IAS) are those that are transmitted from their own ecological niche and to a new niche due to human influence, which causes the biodiversity disaster. International boundaries are indeed porous to the intentional and unintentional movement of species from various eco systems in the country.

It is felt that few initiatives are being taken by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and governance of eco system from IAS is a necessity. Sustainable eco system governance (SESG) from invasive alien species should be emphasized to avoid biodiversity disasters that will have an impact on food security and nutrition of human beings.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the way the functioning of a fishing village changed as a result of the tsunami.

The paper outlines the experiences of the village before and after the tsunami.

The paper lists all that has been learned from rehabilitation following the tsunami.

It is felt that a conceptual change from “teach the poor man to fish rather than provide him with fish” to “provide boat/net, do the fishing, sell them and give the money to the poor man” is the situation after the tsunami in many fisherfolk villages.

The purpose of this paper is to disseminate the success of enterprise development activities initiated by a voluntary organization working in Kanyakumari District of India.

The paper was prepared in discussion with rural artisans and staff of voluntary organization.

It was found that the indigenous palm candy production gave better livelihood for the Nadar community whose prime occupation is harvesting of palm products. Even though the community was in the lowest ebb of the society, proper enterprise capacity building, value addition to palm product like palm candy, marketing and access to credit have paved way for the development of the community. The institutions promoted by Palmyrah Workers Development Society catered to the enterprise intervention of the community thereby increasing the income level of the families. Even though globalization is a threat for rural artisan products, the concept of green and fair trade is providing avenues for rural enterprise.

The study was restricted within a particular community and within a given geographical area.

Even though palm candy is having good market at international market, quality control and eco‐certification is a problem at field level.

The paper illustrates how a backward community has developed enterprise skills and achieved better livelihood options.

The purpose of this study is to focus on the development experience in the global world of two small communities, Viimsi in Estonia and Magog in South Africa. These two communities were chosen as exemplars because the authors were familiar with both, and understood them to be illustrative of differing outcomes of interaction of small communities with the global economy offering the prospect of generalisation of findings to the framework and theory. Twenty years ago, both were poor, since then Viimsi has become wealthy, while Magopa remains poor. It is not believed that becoming the wealthiest community in Estonia was Viimsi’s per-determined destiny. What people of Viimsi did to make their community a success relative to the surrounding peer communities is a story of the visible as much as the invisible attributes.

These attributes are examined using a framework the authors’ originally developed to explore the participation of Indigenous communities in the global economy in pursuit of development as they defined it. A thorough investigation was done on the interactions among various community stakeholder groups in an attempt to describe the social fabric of these two communities, and this was used to explain why Viimsi was able to take advantage of globalisation, when Magopa was not.

While it will be hard, no doubt, to translate all the success attributes of Viimsi to a different location and time, some of the lessons that were uncovered from the study are universal in nature, making them potentially useable for other small communities trying to find their way in the global world.

Studying only two communities means that the generalisation of the findings is limited to theory. None can be made directly to the population of similar communities, except indirectly through exploration using the theory being developed to test its validity in other circumstances.

The findings from this paper will increase the understanding of the factors that contribute the a community’s success of lack of, in participating in the global economy.

This is an under-researched area within development literature.