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In the semi-arid northeast of Brazil, the IFAD-supported Dom Helder Camara project works with local governments, farmers’ organizations, civil society associations and state companies to improve poor people’s living conditions. Together they have brought safe water to communities, opened new markets for their farm products, trained young people and adults, and helped women obtain identity documents.

For generations, poor people around the world have left their homes to seek better wages abroad. Today, the money they send home totals an estimated US$200 billion a year. In Latin America, remittances are worth more than direct foreign investment, official development assistance and foreign aid combined. They have a huge potential to reduce rural poverty. With this in mind, IFAD is exploring ways to lower the transaction costs of sending money home and is working with governments to make sure the money is used productively.

A Peruvian community uses traditional Inca patterns to produce articrafts and sell them to tourists visiting the region.

In 1997, a pilot programme in Colombia to promote rural microcredit was about to close because urban experiences with microcredit were not working in a rural setting. But then IFAD stepped in and encouraged programme staff to innovate and take risks. Ten years later, the programme was considered a model for action and knowledge both nationally and internationally. Its success is a result of an organizational process that succeeded in linking the entire chain, from production to processing to marketing. Phase II is now under way.

An IFAD-supported project in Mexico helps a women’s group set up a sheep farm. One participant tells her story.

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Elmer, Hector and Dalila Cortez have left their home and family in El Salvador to work in the United States . They’re part of a huge global movement of migrant workers who travel to rich countries to find jobs so they can send money home to support poor families. What impact does this cash flow have in the fight against poverty? This IFAD documentary tells the story of the Cortez family in the United States and El Salvador and explores the role development can play in spreading the impact of the remittances flow.

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Mayan honey producers in Mexico’s Southern Yucatan switch to organic production and tap into lucrative international markets.

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Since 2005, IFAD projects in the Andean region have been holding national and regional competitions that provide recognition and economic support to small-scale businesses run by women’s associations. They also encourage women to share their ideas in public. This way everybody wins: the groups that are awarded prizes, and the other participants, who learn new and better ways to solve problems.

Sharing, discussing and learning from successful and less successful experiences is the ultimate goal of all learning organizations. Since 2001, with the support of IFAD, a Latin American training organization specialized in rural development has promoted an innovative learning approach known as ‘learning routes’. Participants of a learning route on market access in poor rural territories visited the business enterprises of five associations in Ecuador and Peru and took valuable lessons back to their own activities and communities.

After 14 years of absence because of armed conflict, a community has returned to its homeland in the Peruvian Andes and is learning again how to cultivate the land. FAO's TeleFood campaign is helping them along with the local NGO.

Bella Margarita is a 28-year-old mother living in Santa Rita de Castilla, a tiny rural district located along the Marañon river in the province of Parinary in the Peruvian Amazon.
Bella, like most people in the region, lives in extreme poverty with no access to electricity, health care, clean water or sanitation services.

I was five years old when the helicopters came and dropped bombs on my village. For weeks before, we had seen the copters flying high in the sky, and we used to laugh at them because they seemed so tiny and made that strange whirring noise. But no one was laughing when they came with the bombs.

72-year-old Armando del Arca Huamaní of Peru, a farmer and father of 13 children, is a family man. He is also a former inmate who has served time in prison on drug charges.

The Instituto Tecnológico Pesquero is, together with FAO, carrying out a two-year project to encourage Peruvians to eat anchovies. They are nutritious, they taste good and they are plentiful and cheap.

To date, the DOTS program has been implemented in 3% of indigenous communities in Panama. Global Fund grants will help health workers to reach 85% of these communities, and cut the mortality rate by half.

Deep in the heart of the Bolivian rain forest, an FAO project is helping former coca growers find legal ways to make a living -- part of the Bolivian Government's alternative development programme.

Beekeeping was successfully introduced to 18 Bolivian communities by a participatory conservation and development FAO project.

FAO's fundraising and awareness raising TeleFood campaign helps farmers with simple but effective technologies.

The development challenges of Colombia are well-known. People struggle to live productive lives in a country weakened by economic crisis, illicit crop trade and violence. Many communities are located in areas where confrontations with the region’s drug-traffickers are frequent, and sometimes daily occurrences.

New bakeries bring work opportunities to rural Mayan women and improved nutrition for their families.

Not long ago, the people of Piedras Grandes, Nicaragua would trudge down to the river and lug its unsafe water back to their homes. The river was the only source of the village’s drinking water. As a result, water-borne illnesses affected many children and their families. Something had to be done.

FAO's programme to eradicate the tropical bont tick, which has been successful on a number of Caribbean islands, is turning its focus to Antigua. Efforts to encourage livestock production on the island and reduce meat imports hinge on the programme's success.

FAO's efforts to eradicate the tropical bont tick have been successful in a large part of the Caribbean. Now the Organization's tick-fighting programme is targeting Antigua, Nevis and St. Maarten where more than half of the Caribbean cattle population is found and the tick is still widespread.

A rural development project in Honduras has shown that people’s participation is key to success. See, hear and read about the project.