Centre For Women's Development

The Centre for Women's Development was founded in Sri Lanka in 1983 to educate, organize and mobilize rural women to work for their own emancipation. It was originally a local organization confined to villages but has now grown into a national organization with activities throughout the country. As well as raising consciousness of women regarding their political, social, economic and cultural rights, the organization is helping to organize rural industries and other income generating avenues for women and is training women activists to work for the well-being of the rural masses.

For more information, contact:

Centre for Women's Development
Happawana, Wanchawela
Sri Lanka

SHAKTI, A Feminist Resource Centre

Shakti was created to fill the need for good, scientific research designed to influence and develop policy on various issues of key concern to women and development. If research efforts by women's groups and are to have an impact on policy, they must be scientifically sound. SHAKTI was conceived to assist developmental grassroots efforts by providing skills and consultancies not locally or readily available. It is creating a base of skilled women professionals from various backgrounds such as medicine, law, marketing, finance, project management, etc. to assist these efforts. It will also set up training programs to develop skills when particular needs are expressed. The organization also takes up consultancies of various kinds, so women's groups can be assisted to develop programs which they can ultimately run themselves.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Mira Savara, Coordinator
SHAKTI
6-10 Sun-N-Sea
25 V.P.Road
Versova, Andheri (W)
Bombay -400 061, India

Women's Institute for New Awakening (WINA)

WINA focusses on education of women for new awareness and seeks to promote this awareness through education, research, oral histories, investigative studies and publications. It also wants to educate men to realize that women have their own perspective due to their experiences and that these need to be taken seriously. The organization tries to hnk up with existing organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, which work with women to strengthen their programs and not duplicate them.

WINA will endeavour to train trainers on different levels, particularly those who work directly with women and girls. Some of the consciously selected target groups are grassroots workers (especially women), tribals from Bihar, M.P. and the Northeast region of India with whom WINA is in contact, men who are for gender justice and can influence other men as well as the core group and staff of the institute, to ensure its own continuous growth and education.

For more information, contact:

Jessie B Tellis Nayak
Coordinator, Wina Vani
John's Hill, Nandigudda Road
Athavar, Mangalore 575 001
India

UBINIG

Policy Research for Development Alternative

There are attempts to reduce the concept of development to abstractions which are technocratic and dehumanized. Real development implies change and UNIBIG believes that equitable distribution of wealth and productive resources is the first step towards that change. It was founded in the belief that poverty can be eradicated and the processes of underdevelopment reversed.

This Bangladesh-based organization carries out action oriented research independently or in cooperation with other groups with similar objectives. Members of the organization include both full-time workers experienced in organizing and conducting research projects and research associates from different disciplines, such as doctors, engineers, pharmacists, economists, sociologists, statisticians etc., who work on specific projects.

Research has been carried out in the areas of: the role of women in production, consumption and marketing of livestock and its by-products, joint Bangladesh/Dutch evaluation of a medical assistant training program, review of the intensive rural works program, an impact study of users and non-users of health and family welfare centers in two unions, export-oriented textile industries and women workers. UBINIG is also looking at land reform, history of community development, monitoring of national drug policy and research on the ideology and practice of population control and family planning and the role of international organizations.

For more information, contact:

UBINIG 8/1, Lalmatia, B-Block Road 30
Dhaka-7, Bangladesh

Scottish Education and Action for Development (SEAD)

SEAD is an educational body which aims to develop Scottish awareness of the challenge and problems of world development and to campaign for a saner distribution of the world's resources. It supports self-help women's projects. Half its support, derived from member contributions goes to directly assist women's projects in Africa, to Scottish Women's Aid - a movement of women who have experienced abuse in the home or are concerned about battered women and children - and to the DOMOS educational resource center in Chile. This latter started in a small shanty town in Santiago and has since grown into an organization which provides literacy classes, advice and workshops on a wide range of health and welfare issues and is a place where women can meet and talk about their problems.

For more information, contact:

SEAD
29 Nicholson Square
Edinburgh, EH8 9BX, Scotland
Tel. 667 0120

Women In Development Europe (WIDE)

WIDE is an association of women based in development NGOs throughout Europe. They are concerned about the need for consultation among women active in the fields of development cooperation and development education. They see a need to change the priorities of policies and practices of the NGOs in which they work and the development assistance programs of governments as well as intergovernmental organizations to make them more responsive to the needs and demands of women in particular countries. They seek to promote purposeful contacts with women in partner countries in order to bring about necessary structural changes.

For more information, contact:

Georgina Ashworth
International Coalition for Development Action (ICDA)
22, Rue des Bollandistes
B-1040 Brussels, Belgium