In the Field: Exploring Innovative Improvements to Livelihoods around the World [cassettes and booklet]

In 2000 and 2001, the BBC World Service and the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich collaborated on a DFID-funded multi-media project in an effort to showcase various approaches to improving poor people's livelihoods. Using interviews with project participants in small communities worldwide, organisers hoped to increase appreciation of the way in which people in different parts of the world have approached common problems and issues. Click here for more details on this project.

Topics covered in the 12 BBC World Service radio programmes include:

• The Buabeng-Fiema monkey sanctuary, Ghana
• Tree pods - a new way of feeding goats, India
• The need for agricultural land in the city, Ghana
• Stepping off the pesticides treadmill, India
• Vegetable gardens in the city, Zimbabwe
• Farmers who don't just farm, Poland
• Introducing ethical trade, UK and Ghana
• Different ways of understanding ethical trade, Ghana and UK
• Fighting the rat problem using new traps, Mozambique
• Alternatives to "slash and burn" agriculture, Bolivia
• Trading cocoa fairly, Ecuador
• Training "barefoot vets" to treat village animals, Indonesia

Cassette tapes of the radio series may be obtained for those who cannot, or who prefer not to, access the audio on the BBC website. (See contact details, below).

Click here to listen to the radio programmes online on the Livelihoods Connect website.

Organisers envisage that the radio programmes, along with printed notes supporting them, may be of interest to institutions and organisations that intend to use the material in teaching or training. The printed booklet consolidates what was in the programmes and raises related issues. It features photographs of many of the villagers featured in the programmes and of the villages they live in, as well as maps showing the location of villages. The double-page spread for each programme is separated into sections designed for ease of reading, entitled 'Setting the Scene', 'Defining the Problem', 'Taking Action', 'Global Relevance', 'Cast and Key Quote', and 'Thinking Points'. There are also 2 double page spreads looking at cross-cutting issues related to tackling livelihood problems. These notes focus on issues basic to the holistic Sustainable Livelihoods approach to development that has been adopted by DFID in recent years - Access to Livelihood Assets and Vulnerability, Complexity and Diversification. These sections are linked to the sections on the programmes.