'From Many Lands' gives us an opportunity to meet the invisible people, see their invisible world, and hear their voices as they talk among themselves and talk to us. What this will mean to us, that is up to us to decide.
Muhammad Yunus
Founder and Managing Director; Grameen Bank

Voices of the Poor is a multicountry research initiative to understand poverty from the standpoint of the poor. The Voices of the Poor project was undertaken to inform the World Bank's activities and the World Development Report 2000/2001.

There are three books from this project:...

'Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook' is an outcome of 'World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty', which highlighted opportunity, empowerment, and security as key elements in the creation and implementation of poverty reduction strategies. This book provides a framework for empowerment that concentrates on increasing poor people's freedom of choice and action to shape their own lives. This framework pertains to five areas of action to improve development effectiveness - provision of basic services, improved local governance, improved national governance, access to...

Poverty reduction on a large scale depends on empowering those who are most motivated to move out of poverty?--poor people themselves. But if empowerment cannot be measured, it will not be taken seriously in development policy making and programming. Building on the award-winning 'Empowerment and Poverty Reduction' sourcebook, this volume outlines a conceptual framework that can be used to monitor and evaluate programs centered on empowerment approaches. It presents the perspectives of 27 distinguished researchers and practitioners in economics, political science, sociology, psychology,...

Development cannot be imposed from the outside. It has to happen from within. This groundbreaking book from South Asia shows how homegrown experiments can be scaled up to transform the lives of millions of poor women and men in the developing world. Here are stories of development ideas that work and of the visionary individuals who were determined to see them succeed. These achievements have taken place against all odds, in countries struggling with widespread corruption, weak governance, minimal infrastructure, deep-rooted social divisions, and poorly functioning judicial systems. South...

This book brings together the latest thinking about poverty dynamics from diverse analytic traditions. While covering a vast body of conceptual and empirical knowledge about economic and social mobility, it takes the reader on compelling journeys of multigenerational accounts of three villages in Kanartaka, India, twelve years in the life of a street child in Burkina Faso, and much more. Leading development practitioners and scholars from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology critically examine the literature from their disciplines and contribute new...

"There is no peace with hunger. Only promises and promises and no fulfillment. If there is no job, there is no peace. If there is nothing to cook in the pot, there is no peace." - Oscar, a 57-year-old man, El Gorrion, Colombia "They want to construct their houses near the road, and they cannot do that if they do not have peace with their enemies. So peace and the road have developed a symbiotic relation. One cannot live without the other. . . ." - A community leader from a conflict-affected community on the island of Mindanao, Philippines Most conflict studies focus on the national level, but...

No matter if I fall, I get up again. If I fall 5,000 times, I will stand up another 5,000 times. William, a 37-year-old from El Gorrion, Colombia Why and how do some people move out of poverty and stay out while others remain trapped? Most books on growth and poverty reduction are dominated by the perspectives of policy makers and academic experts. In contrast, 'Moving Out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up' presents the experiences of poor people who have made it out of poverty. The book s findings draw from the Moving Out of Poverty research conducted in communities in 15 countries in...

'To take birth as a poor man itself is a big punishment. We are facing many difficulties and there is none to support us. We cannot die also. Our condition is like applying perfumed oil to mustache when there is no food to eat.' - Male focus group discussion, Appipuram, Andhra Pradesh India has experienced accelerating growth in the last 10 years, yet millions of Indians remain mired in poverty. Why? Most books on growth and poverty reduction are dominated by the perspectives of policy makers and academic experts. 'Moving Out of Poverty: The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India'...