India
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is the single largest Central Trade Union registered with a membership of over 1.5 million (2018) poor, self-employed women workers from the informal economy across 18 states in India. SEWA has been working for almost 5 decades to improve the livelihoods of poor self-employed women workers through
various initiatives using technology, technical training, microfinance, market linkages, and natural resource management across over 125 different trades.
To achieve its goals of Full-Employment and Self-Reliance for its members and to facilitate representation, economic empowerment, collective strength & increased bargaining power of its members, SEWA follows integrated approach of:
- Organizing for collective strength
- Capacity building to stand firm in competitive market
- Capital formation for risk mitigation & fight poverty
- Social security to enhance well-being & productivity
The following resources were provided through CHEQI's work with SEWA in 2021:
- $250,000 COVID Support Grant from Direct Relief
- $500,000 Direct Relief Grant
- 1 million masks and 22 oxygen concentrators donated
Kenya
The Bridging Income Generation through Group Integrated Care (BIGPIC) model has been developed, implemented, and researched as a novel, community centered model of care which seamlessly integrates microfinance, economic opportunities, and health services into community groups across rural western Kenya.
Additionally, because of the mental health issues many street youth face, a service learning project was started to establish a mental health service for street youth at the Tumaini Innovation Center in Kenya. Goals include:
- Identifying the mental health status of youth participating in the Tumaini Innovation Center.
- Creating opportunities to improve mental health of youth participating in activities at the Tumaini Innovation Center.
- Creating sustainable approaches to understanding, monitoring and managing mental health issues at the Tumaini Innovation Center.
- Improve staff knowledge on mental health issues among youth and create tools to promote positive mental health.
Scholarship based on CHEQI's work in Kenya includes:
- Human-centered implementation research: a new approach to develop and evaluate implementation strategies for strengthening referral networks for hypertension in western Kenya
- Risk of Dysglycemia in Pregnancy amongst Kenyan Women with HIV Infection: A Nested Case-Control Analysis from the STRiDE Study
- The Relationship Between Household Microfinance Group Participation and Vaccine Adherence Among Children in Rural Western Kenya
- Group Medical Visit and Microfinance Intervention for Patients With Diabetes or Hypertension in Kenya
- Chronic Disease Stigma, Skepticism of the Health System, and Socio-economic Fragility: A qualitative assessment of factors impacting receptiveness to group medical visits and microfinance for non-communicable disease care in rural Kenya
- Solving the problem of access to cardiovascular medicines: revolving fund pharmacy models in rural western Kenya
- Microfinance, retention in care, and mortality among patients enrolled in HIV care in East Africa
- Integrated community-based HIV and non-communicable disease care within microfinance groups in Kenya: study protocol for the Harambee cluster randomised trial