How are people in Galle, Sri Lanka, picking up the pieces following the disaster in December? Mark Perera finds out.

Pamela Jenner writes from Kanniyakumari in southern India

When the Mexican government banned turtle-fishing in 1990, many of Mazunte’s inhabitants were left without work.

Social entrepreneurs aren’t just in it for the bottom line—or out of a desire to ‘do good’. Pamela Hartigan sees them as the architects of a new social economy.

The Micro Loan Foundation is working for long-term sustainable development in Malawi as opposed to providing temporary solutions. As celebrity patron Bob Geldof says, ‘To treat someone as an adult human being with a stake in his or her future is the essence of sound empirical business sense.’

Pam McGibbon, then 46, was living in Scotland, where she and her husband ran a company organizing exhibitions.

As you reach out for a jar of coffee in the supermarket, you can give a hand to the people who grew the beans, discovers Mary Lean.

Michael Smith reports on the Indian industrial empire that is producing social capital as well as profits.

Few issues have caused such division in recent times as Saddam Hussein's despotic regime. The Bush and Blair governments argue that such a regime must not be allowed to use weapons of mass destruction. Other governments - and millions of peace marchers - feel that war is too costly a solution. Both sides claim the moral high ground.

Keith and Ruth Neal, retired school teachers from Manchester, recently visited Sierra Leone, where a devastating civil war ended last year. They found people determined to rebuild.