In July of 1999, the PI, in collaboration with WWF-Solomon Islands, established "The Baraulu/Bulelavata Women's Sewing Project" to assist women in conserving their shellfish. The sewing project is designed to provide local women with income to support local enterprises such as the construction of a permanent facility for women's activities, sending local women to nursing and vocational schools in Honiara, and other initiatives. The project is linked to a resource-management initiative concerned with the temporal closure of selected mangrove habitats to protect various crustaceans and bivalve species, particularly Anadara granosa (blood cockle) and various Polymesoda (mud clam) bivalves (e.g., Batissa fortis). The income that women lose by not selling shells is compensated for by the sewing project's cash profits. Thanks to our efforts and the genuine concern of Baraulu women, the collection of over-exploited mud clamshells, blood cockles, oysters, and all other invertebrates in this habitat have been temporarily banned from September to May of each year. The closures began in September of 1999 and reopened in May of 2000, and then closed again in September of 2000 to reopen in May of 2001. The project has been extended for several more years. Women's groups around the region have shown tremendous interest in this initiative, opening the door for the expansion of similar projects across the region. Thus this project needs to be consolidated and expanded. Each project requires about twelve sewing machines, one generator, a permanent facility for women (e.g., a women's club/meeting house), and a canoe and engine for marketing the clothing. The advantage of this combined resource management and development project in Baraulu Village is that the closure is in a sea-tenure area where boundaries are well defined, where there are no poaching pressures from neighboring groups, where there is a capacity to monitor and enforce rules, and where the closures have been established through the participatory decisions of all stakeholders.