This book examines how international aid donors and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) can assist countries in the Asia-Pacific region achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The book examines the progress countries have made towards the MDGs and highlights the need to tailor the goals to individual country circumstances.

Focusing on the vulnerability and resilience to economic shocks at the household level, this book draws on extensive research activities carried out in two Melanesia countries: the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. In particular, it identifies the household impacts of the recent food, fuel and economic crises. The contributors also examine resilience by identifying how households responded to these recent economic events in order to cope with their impacts. Findings indicate that households are vulnerable to a range of shocks and often struggle to cope with their impacts. Shocks are making it harder for households to meet their basic needs. Households in Melanesia are facing increasing demands for money, in particular for school fees, basic foodstuffs and customary obligations. Concurrently, there are limited domestic opportunities for formal employment. Traditional social support networks are strong and are an important form of resilience. However, there is evidence that they are disintegrating. Of particular focus are the gendered impacts. Women are found to bear a disproportionate share of the burden in adjusting to household shocks. The authors highlight key areas in which public policy and development programmes can reduce household vulnerability and increase their resilience to future economic shocks.

Focusing on the vulnerability and resilience to economic shocks at the household level, this book draws on extensive research activities carried out in two Melanesia countries: the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. In particular, it identifies the household impacts of the recent food, fuel and economic crises. The contributors also examine resilience by identifying how households responded to these recent economic events in order to cope with their impacts. Findings indicate that households are vulnerable to a range of shocks and often struggle to cope with their impacts. Shocks are making it harder for households to meet their basic needs. Households in Melanesia are facing increasing demands for money, in particular for school fees, basic foodstuffs and customary obligations. Concurrently, there are limited domestic opportunities for formal employment. Traditional social support networks are strong and are an important form of resilience. However, there is evidence that they are disintegrating. Of particular focus are the gendered impacts. Women are found to bear a disproportionate share of the burden in adjusting to household shocks. The authors highlight key areas in which public policy and development programmes can reduce household vulnerability and increase their resilience to future economic shocks.

This book examines the attitudes of tertiary students in Melanesia and Timor-Leste to national identity and key issues of nation-building. Their views are pivotal to understanding the challenges of building a more cohesive sense of national identity and political community in these states. Melanesian countries show a relatively high degree of similarity in their responses to the surveys on national identity carried out by the authors, but with key differences attributable to particular historical, regional or linguistic legacies of colonial rule. The ongoing importance of traditional authority and kastom/adat in conceptions of political community and identity is evident in all four case study sites, and in each case matches indicators of respect for modern state authority. Although different for each site, the authors' findings also illustrate the importance of students' geographical region of origin, language orientation and gender in explaining key differences in attitudes towards national identity. The book demonstrates that strong levels of national identification and pride persist among the future leaders of the countries surveyed, even in the face of ongoing regional and linguistic divisions and weak state capacity, suggesting a strong potential basis for nation-building agendas if wider challenges of democratic performance, service provision and regional development can be addressed over time.

In the year 2000, the international community agreed to a framework to address global poverty. This framework, known as the Millennium Development Goals, was time-bound with an end date of 2015. With this end now in sight, the international community is focusing on the achievement of these goals. However, it is also very important that consideration now turns to what will follow the MDGs after 2015. Millennium Development Goals: Looking Beyond 2015 provides a critical analysis of the MDGs and discusses a range of issues that must be considered by the international community in determining what poverty alleviation framework might replace the MDGs. This reflection is made even more imperative as the poverty landscape has shifted considerably since these original goals were made. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy.

This book provides important information regarding the Millennium Development Goals, adopted unanimously by the United Nations in 2000, setting explicit targets in terms of achieving progress in the developing world. This volume provides both a theoretical overview of the role of education in development and also illustrates this with various case studies (based on work of non-government organisations and other donors) in the Asia-Pacific region. The authors include a mix of development practitioners as well as academics engaged in research in this field. Thus, the theory is illustrated and extrapolated by case studies focussing on community development interventions.