The Women of India Network (WIN)

The Women of India Network – a pioneer approach to poverty reduction

Long before the international development community officially embraced the Reproductive Health paradigm Indian gynecologist Dr. Parikh developed an integrated approach to poverty reduction that placed women at the center of the development process. Through basic health care services, informal training and income generating activities, entire slum communities have been able to break the vicious cycle of extreme poverty. Instrumental in the success of the WIN project basic are the “social workers” who are recruited from among the target communities. Their unique access to the population allows the WIN project to reach out to the poorest of the poor.

Indian-Swiss Collaboration

The collaboration between the faculty of Socioeconomics and the Women of India Network (WIN) started in 2008. The WIN project uses health care as an entry point to bring about social and economic change in the slums of Mumbai. A side product of this grassroots health care system is a unique data collection on the inhabitants of these slums. Given the scarcity of data on slum dwellers, the WIN data base represents a unique source of information on the socioeconomics of poor households in urban India. Realizing this potential WIN's donor organization, the Lausanne-based Foundation for Population and Development initiated a contact with the department of socioeconomics that has resulted in a rich exchange of experience and knowledge. So far, three teams of students have spent up to six months in Mumbai in order to develop new surveys, to analyze the collected data as well as to assist the project management in using this data base as a tool for monitoring and evaluation. In February 2011 the third team of students from the University of Geneva has come back from five months in Mumbai.