Since 1970, the Servicio National de Desarrollo de la Comunidad (SNDC) has been in existence as an autonomous decentralized government agency. Its main effort has been to integrate Bolivia's 3.4 million rural inhabitants, the "campesinos," into the mainstream of national socioeconomic programs through self-help development projects at…

SHE is a rural California home building corporation founded on the principles of self-help. Lacking sufficient capital to purchase or finance a home by conventional means, a low-income family may elect to "self-construct with SHE". A participant family agrees to invest its labor, up to 1,500 hours, in the supervised construction of its…

This paper outlines various aspects of the Learning Improvement Group (LIG). The LIG is described as a model for organizing existing resources to meet basic skills needs of students. Reference is also made to the identification of both student and teacher reading/learning needs in self-renewing schools. Suggestions are made regarding the…

The policy of apartheid, until recently one of the dominant aspects of South African society, has caused grievous harm to that nation's non-white population, especially black women and children. Most black children have not grown up in stable, two-parent families due to migrant labor policies and low wages. Housing, health care, nutrition, and…

The Fundacion Social, a grassroots organization in Colombia, uses profits from its 14 companies to fund community self-help initiatives aimed at eliminating poverty. Social programs focus on community integration, microbusinesses, recycling, education, and communication. The organization seeks to eliminate structural poverty and is currently…