ACHIVEMENTS
- 120 community halls built
- 4 vocational training workshops built
- 1 health center built
- 3 existing dispensaries upgraded
- 79 neighborhood committees formed with 4,788 members
- 71 women’s groups started with 4,706 members
- 190 kindergarten established in 100 slums
- 67 non-formal education centers in 47 slums covering 1098 drop-out children
- 83 adult education centers covering 15,541 persons
- 20 slums have reached 100 percent literacy level
- Community maintained data base established covering infant mortality, immunization coverage, family planning, frequency and nature of illnesses, child weights etc.
| Progress with education programme | Achievement in 1992 |
| Households covered | 53,084 |
| Population covered | 265,425 |
| Total children 3-5 years | 20,120 |
| Total target group | 12,072 |
| Proportion of eligible children covered | 60% |
| Progress with health programme | Achievement in 1992 |
| Number of slums involved | 121 |
| Number of Auxiliary Nurse Midwives | 41 |
| Number of Community Health Workers | 103 |
| Population covered | 265,000 |
| Auxiliary Nurse trained mothers | 9,377 |
| Children (0-1 years) | 7,428 |
| Eligible couples | 38,123 |
THE GENDER ASPECTS
In Slum Networking many of the community development interventions are focused on women and girls, who will in turn be tomorrow’s mothers. The reason for doing so is to stem the carry over of the disadvantages from one generation to another. For example, there is a clear correlation between the female literacy rate and an array of other indicators such as infant mortality rate, birth rate, educational levels of children and family incomes. Thus, activities such as mother and child care, female literacy, income generation, vocational training and legal literacy assume special importance in Slum Networking. Some of these activities are specially designed to empower the women to control their destinies. This is reinforced by majority representation of women both in terms of the numbers and also the key positions held in all the projects. In Indore, not only are the majority of members in all the 79 neighborhood committees women but they also predominantly hold the positions of the chairpersons, secretaries and treasures.
On the physical front, women in slums face the worst hardships of environmental and sanitation degradations. Sometimes hours have to be spent just to fetch enough water for the day. Often girls miss school to help with the daily chores of cleaning the house and its insanitary environs. Women are, therefore, highly motivated to initiate development and play a more mature role in reaching consensus and resolving differences which arise in the community. They also show a greater degree of responsibility in managing money and making repayments. The Baroda project came to fruition in spite of the long incubation period of three years simply because of the persistence of the women there to have individual water taps and toilets.
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- Slum Networking of Indore City. Indore, 1997.