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Review of current knowledge about the response of children and young people in South Africa to HIV/AIDS, programming around prevention and living positively, and the potential of social mobilisation as a next phase in a sustained response to HIV/AIDS

This report raises awareness of the global burden of mental and neurological disorders, and its cost in human, social and economic terms. It also aims to dismantle the barriers which prevent millions of sufferers of mental and neurological disorders from receiving the treatment they need and deserve. The report describes how mental health problems can be solved (eg. by drug therapy, psycho-social rehabilitation and psychotherapy, vocational rehabilitation, housing), and gives examples of the effectiveness of these treatments for a wide range of mental disorders

Describes the emerging findings from the Effecitveness Initiaitve (EI), an open and flexible dialogue between ten international sites investigating good practices and lessons in early childhood development. Includes description of a variety of tools and strategies that have been used `for listening to different voices' and for finding out information about each of the projects. These include the `river analogy', used to construct a visual history of projects in Peru and Colombia; the farm land `machamba' analogy form Mozambique that helps people to analyse the evolution of community based early childhood development sites; seasonal calenders from the Philippines; meetings and debates from Portugal; different forms of open and unstructured interviews; personal diaries and `family books'; and the analysis of anecdotes and stories in almost all the teams. This issue looks at a range of the projects and a number of issues related to the EI enquiry, such as: looking at how `Atlas-ti' qualitative analysis software has been used to identify common elements of effective programming while retaining links with the original qualitative data - charting both 'thematic affinities' and diverse local expressions of what makes for effectiveness; and how data gathered by the projects is returned to all the people who provided it for challenge and modification in open meetings; also describes the way different kinds of information were collected, compared and `triangulated' to confirm findings. Key findings include: that `credibility', built on trust and respect of local priorities, is vital; also simply creating room for reflection and research by those involved in projects is an important component of making effective programmes; and conducting research in the local language helps to get at issues that are important for participants and staff

This report records the proceedings of the conference Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children: What Role for Social Protection? This two-day conference sought to promote awareness of the extent of the orphan and other vulnerable children crisis caused by HIV/AIDS, to provide practitioners with a forum to share best practices and other insights, and to probe the role of social protection in implementing a balanced response

Improving nutrition in developing countries is both a humanitarian and economic imperative. This publication provides a systematic evaluation of what works and what does not with a review of the major nutrition problems in Asia, a review of supplementation and fortification efficacy and effectiveness trials, and an impact assessment of food-based approaches to improve maternal and child nutrition. It calls for a sensible level of investment in operations research and cost-effectiveness analysis to improve nutrition programming throughout the donor community and national budgets in developing countries