The VSLA has enabled Ghanaian shop-owner Vincentia Dei-Zanga to buy a motorbike to hire out as a taxi

"The loan interest was so high that I felt like I was just working for the bank. It was so difficult and they won't help you," says Vincentia Dei-Zanga, 54, as she talks about her experiences with the local banks and moneylenders.

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Village Savings and Loans Association helps expand rice farm

Trudging barefoot through the knee-deep mud with her trousers hiked up past her knees, Florence Ameza makes her way over to greet us. She smiles bashfully as she gesticulates to the rice paddy behind her, a one-acre field that is part of her rice farms in Tordzino, near Dabala.

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Father Forbes Maupa says his church is giving vital practical as well as spiritual support to its parish due to the economic and social instability

Father Forbes Maupa is a busy man. Not only is he the priest of the Church of the Resurrection in Wattville, South Africa, but he is also the rector of the parish, which means he looks out for the safety of the wider community. This includes the running of the Siyanakekela feeding scheme, a volunteer-run project that feeds children from poor backgrounds hot meals after school and runs a clothes bank. Women come to the church for psychological support to help them deal with domestic abuse.

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Beliefs such as the existence of evil spirits are not easy to dispel in Sierra Leone, and traditional healers are still in demand

Mustafa Koroma is the traditional healer Mamie Kemokai is paying to help her. He is not what one might expect. He is almost entirely devoid of theatrics, a thin man with a quiet voice, wearing a tattered white vest, white shorts and plain, black flip-flops. "I do think I am more powerful than health professionals, because modern medicine could not help Mamie," he says in an almost apologetic tone, his hands wringing a canvas bag he clutches in his lap.

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A care centre founded by four men in South Africa's KwaThema township offers health and psychological support to vulnerable women and children

In a society where men often fail to support their own families, Stanley Nhlangothi could be seen as an unlikely advocate for women's rights. He has been running a care centre, New Image Rover Crew, providing health and psychological support to vulnerable women, children and orphans in the township of KwaThema, since 1996. He set up the project but three others soon joined, all of whom are male.

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Community health volunteers can only do much, particularly in a country with poor infrastructure, such as Sierra Leone

"Community health workers are great, but only when you give them very specific tasks to do," says Dr Edi Atté of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). "If you give them more responsibility it becomes problematic, because they are not trained healthcare workers."

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Having twice lost babies to exposure and malnutrition while sleeping on the streets to escape her violent husband, one woman has found refuge in a safehouse in Timor-Leste

Fernanda Martines*, 38, is fiercely proud of her bedroom in the Baucau safehouse. She reverently opens heavy wooden wardrobes to reveal a few immaculately folded items of clothing and row upon row of cheap soap sachets, neatly arranged. "Her husband never let her spend money on herself," says Domingas, "and anything she bought for her children was taken from her too. Fernanda has lost much of her memory as a result of trauma, but she still has the instinct to provide for her family - that's what all those soaps are about."

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This week it was suggested that the growing numbers of city dwellers keeping chickens were spreading disease and harming birds. But is it just bad blood on the part of big food producers?

Billy, seven, brings me a book. "Have you seen this?" It is a well-worn copy of Keeping Chickens, with colour photos and illustrations on every page, several of them featuring attractive children shot against beautiful blue skies. On the table in the open-plan living space of his north London family home, the book falls open on a chapter headed "What to consider".

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Dr Kshama Metre, the 2012 winner of the Guardian International Development Achievement Award, on transforming the lives of thousands of poor people across rural India

Andy Gallagher

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Fictional republic of Carana is location for training the African Standby Force, which is due to become operational in 2015

Standing in a tranquil spot in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, nestling under the lush, green shadow of Mount Entoto, it is almost impossible to imagine yourself in war-torn Carana. But that is exactly what the 106 participants in Exercise Njiwa (Swahili for peace) are trying to do in the grounds of the eastern brigade headquarters of the African Standby Force (ASF). The tinkling of cutlery that emerges from the refreshment tent is no substitute for the sound of gunfire and mortar rounds.

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