Most people enjoy eating ripe fruit such as mangoes, oranges, bananas and guavas. Children enjoy the taste so much that they will often eat unripe fruit! However, ripe fruit does not store well or travel well to distant markets. Other people’s fruit usually ripens at the same time, so market prices fall, making it hard to sell at a good price. Preserving fruit to enjoy its flavour throughout the year is therefore very important to avoid wastage and increase income. The simplest ways of ...

by Susie Hart. In 1997 I spent three months at a L’Arche community in Kampala, Uganda. L’Arche is a Christian organisation that provides a lifelong family environment for people with learning difficulties, living together with one another and their carers. Many of their communities have craft workshops to provide income and useful activities for their members. When I arrived, equipped only with a small bag of candle making equipment, I found to my dismay there was no workshop and I was ...

Before supplying products or services, first find out if enough people will want to buy them. Find out what people really think, what they would like…

If no outside income is available, small groups can agree to work together to raise income for micro-enterprise (or other purposes). A certain time…

by Osvaldo Munguia and Judith Collins. The Miskito people in Honduras have traditionally always used batana oil – extracted from the nut of the American palm (Elaeis oleifera) – as a skin and hair treatment. It encourages thick, shiny hair and repairs damaged hair. Oils for cooking are also extracted from both the nut and husk, and the husk is used to make a type of porridge. After extracting the oil, the waste products provide a nutritious feed for the local pigs.

by Michael Duggan and Paul Draper. Like many remote places in the world, the island of Rodrigues, 350 miles NE of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, has a number of poor people with disabilities. The island is only eight miles by four miles in size with a rapidly growing population...