This 'Hands On' travels to India, Sri Lanka and Thailand to see how credit initiatives can boost more than just incomes; and how innovative fishing methods combined with changed practices can also improve livelihoods and safeguard the environment.

Girl power, India

Uruli Devachi is a rural village in Maharashtra, India. Five years ago India's national bank for agricultural and rural development and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) started a credit scheme that has transformed the lives of the villagers by bringing banks - and credit - closer to poorer people.

The scheme encourages women to gather into small self-help groups each with around 20 members. The groups act as mini credit unions, where women put small amounts of money aside each week. A group leader is trained in book keeping and monitors the small subsistence loans that women take out of the pot. Loyalty to the group ensures a 100% pay back rate.

Kamal Shinde is one of the great success stories of the Maharashtra Rural Credit Programme. After her husband abandoned her, Kamal turned to farm labouring until the project offered her small business training.

Five years on, Kamal runs a successful catering business that employs, and provides housing for, five other women. Now, Kamal is also chairman of her village council.

Her next plan is to buy land and build a restaurant.

As well as starting and supporting businesses, the credit scheme is also helping women gain more confidence and there have been a lot of social changes in the village as a result. Now the villagers pulls together when there is a crisis or when a large project needs funding. So far the villagers have made improvements in sanitation, planted trees and built roads.

For more in-depth information from the Hands On team, visit their website.

Small cash, big change, India

Not far from India's capital, Delhi, Mewat lies in the Indian state of Haryana. But, despite its proximity to the capital city, Mewat has been left behind.

Recently, IFAD and the government of India decided to try to tackle poverty by investing in the area with a combined funding initiative.

Like the credit programme in Maharashtra, women meet at self-help groups, pool their money and apply for credit. But the self-help groups here have done more than collect savings and provide loans. They act as a forum for increased awareness where they discuss topics such as village health, sanitation and their children's education. The women have learnt to share ideas, speak out and gain status in their own homes. But it wasn't easy in the beginning.

This male dominated society was resistant at first. Men didn't like the idea of their wives and daughters joining groups and getting training. It had to be dealt with sensitively.

Now age-old attitudes toward education - particularly for girls - are changing. Five years ago on 2% of women were literate. Now it's increased to 14% thanks to the growing awareness of parents, particularly mothers, through the project.

For more in-depth information from the Hands On team, visit their website.

Cashing in on cashews, Sri Lanka

Gampaha, not far from Colombo, is famous for cashew nuts. Most of the families living here are engaged in cashew processing, and for the women, it's the main source of income.

Being a seasonal crop, the main problem was that the women cashew processors couldn't buy enough stocks to process throughout the year, which made them dependent on middlemen. By controlling the market it was the middlemen who made the biggest profit, not the skilled cashew processors.

With help from the Intermediate Development Group (ITDG), who developed a special oven to dry the cashews, the women have taken control of every aspect of their business - including buying and selling. The main achievement for these women was to prove their credit worthiness with the banks. Now, they no longer need the middlemen to supply the cashew nuts.

For more in-depth information from the Hands On team, visit their website.

Small fry, big catch, Thailand

For people living in North East Thailand wild fish and rice have been important parts of their diet for centuries. But population growth and over fishing has cut the supply of wild fish and driven local farmers to try their own hand at aquaculture - or fish farming.

Ten years ago the UK's Department For International Development funded an aquaculture project and the results have been dramatic with thousands of small farmers successfully rearing fish.

Combined with help from the Asian Institute of Technology's training programme, which teaches farmers how to use manure and nitrogen fixing agents to encourage the growth of nutritious phyto plankton, productivity has increased - and so have profits.

For more in-depth information from the Hands On team, visit their website.

A net offensive, Thailand

The beaches of Krabbe, Phuket and Phang Na in the South of Thailand are known for their natural splendour and idyllic atmosphere. But although the environment is very different to that of Udon Thani the threat to people's livelihoods is the same.

Burgeoning tourism, over fishing and destructive push net fishing practices have exhausted the once abundant marine harvest, degraded the environment and left the villagers with less food and income.

Mangroves play an important role in the coastal ecosystem providing a breeding area for many fish species as well as a protective habitat for crabs and birds. But large areas were cleared to make way for intensive shrimp farming. The Andaman Sea Development Centre stopped this practice in Phang Na Bay.

Supported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, the villagers have adopted new community-based solutions to revitalize their environment - and their economy.

Students from local schools have been drafted in to help restore the mangroves by gathering seedlings in the forest for cultivation. The success rate is high and in a few years the children will see the results of their work.

Equally important to this environment are the beds of sea grass. To protect these areas, community leaders are encouraging villagers to protect the muddy shallows directly in front of their houses. These areas are demarcated and protected from fishing.

But what about protecting the livelihoods of the fishermen?

Traditionally fishermen here worked alone and were at the mercy of daily fluctuations in market prices and the whim of the middlemen. Now, a co-operative auction system, which cuts out the middlemen, ensures that the fishermen receive around 30% more for their catch.

For more in-depth information from the Hands On team, visit their website.