This is an ethnographic study of the literacy practices of a group of rural Northeastern Thai women participating in a community-based literacy programme. Field research for the study examined the women's literacy practices and domains of literacy use in daily life, and the strategies they used to negotiate day-to-day life tasks in the context of change and development in their local community. Findings show that the women effectively negotiated life tasks associated with literacy in development by employing individual literacy skills, collaborative literacy practices within family and community networks, and a mix of new technologies and traditional oral and visual communication systems. The author argues that collaboration and the ability to draw on and work within social networks might be considered a form of social capital for development, and collaborative and visual literacy practices forms of new basic skills.