I'm not sure about those first two questions. If you're looking for information on development projects, I would suggest starting off with sites for NGOs like the World Bank or World Health Organization. Since they're relatively well funded, they have the resources to publish large datasets online. That being said, finding out about smaller NGOs and NPOs could also be helpful. I'm sure that there are a lot of groups out there that need or want someone to help out with GIS work, but they might not have either the resources or the knowledge about how to go about that.
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