I am completing placement with Stree Mukti Sanghatana (SMS) in Mumbai. This is a women’s liberation organisation, founded in 1975. The key aim of the organisation is to achieve a gender just world through providing healthcare and education to various communities/slum areas across Mumbai.
The organisation runs ten daycare centres for children of working mothers. It also runs an adolescent sensitization program called Judnyasa (curiosity) which is oriented towards school going children, covering gender issues, stress management, sexuality and environmental concerns.
SMS has set up seven family counselling centres that help women who are victims of domestic abuse.
A huge aspect of the organisation’s work revolves around waste pickers. They began this initiative in 1998 with the launch of Parisar Vikas. This is one of the organisation’s key programmes and it aims to recycle waste and create zero-waste cities. SMS have the goal of helping waste pickers through education and providing a rightful place in the economy for waste-picking.
I stay on TISS campus in an apartment which is shared between myself, Orlaith and Niamh. The apartment is very satisfactory with lots of facilities including air conditioning, basic cooking facilities, a bathroom with shower, a water filter, two bedrooms and a seating area. The campus is located roughly 15 minutes away from my workplace. I travel to work in a rickshaw every day.
I work five days a week from 11:30am-6pm in the office which is located in Shivaji Nagar. We take a half hour break from 1:30pm-2pm when we eat lunch. My key tasks are as follows:
- To complete a report on a cancer screening camp held by SMS in 2016. I must first input the data from each patient into Excel, then analyse the data and finally complete a report on this.
- To complete a report on the medical camps held by SMS from October 2018 to March 2019. I must input the data to Excel, analyse it, and finally I have to compare and report each medical camp.
- I’ve also been able to visit these medical screening camps myself which I learned a lot from and found to be a rewarding experience.
Other important objectives include:
- To use my fluent English to help with writing reports.
- To use my computer skills in Excel and Word.
- To provide my own knowledge and different perspectives to help the organisation improve any way I can.
- To promote the organisation and highlight the profound successes of SMS to date.
International Development Placement 2019 