Jean Vanier heard the `silent cry' of two men with mental handicaps and found himself living in the first of the L'Arche communities. He talks to Christiane Mallet-Watteville.

The company that is doing the conversions employs, among others, alcoholics, drug-addicts, former prisoners - people who are generally considered unemployable.

Thirteen years ago it wasn't safe to walk around Pukatawagon, Manitoba. Today the police spend their time showing films. Bob Lowery investigates.

On these pages Mike Bucki from Atlanta, Georgia, looks at a small but encouraging drop in this ocean of misery – an international charity which is working with the poor to outlaw unacceptable housing and homelessness. In so doing, Habitat for Humanity is tapping into a gathering trend in development thinking that the most efficient way to answer housing problems is to empower people to build houses for themselves.

In one week, 20 houses had been built for low income families who could never have dreamed of owning a house were it not for Habitat.

Using a combination of evangelism and practical business sense, the Perkins are nurturing a 'can do' attitude in eight blocks around their home.

`Bridge Park' was created and is run by a largely black community, many of whom would once have fitted the stereotype well. What has made it work?

Walkerswood, Mitchell's village, has become for many Jamaicans synonymous with development as it should be - communitybased and as self-reliant as possible, minimizing government intervention and reducing `internal' migration to the cities.

Four years ago All Saints Episcopal Church asked one of their congregation, Denise Wood, to survey Pasadena's `quality of life'. For nine months she went around listening to people and their concerns. What she discovered was a 'city in pain', as she describes it, with alarming problems most people were unaware of.