Eduardo Gustale, manager of the Poverty Stoplight, traveled to India to study the possibility of applying this tool (Poverty Stoplight) with SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association), the world’s largest organization of informal workers, the largest nonprofit organization in India, and whose work is framed around the goal of formalizing jobs, seeking that the woman entrepreneur can improve her quality of life: income, food, health care, child care, and shelter.

Founded in 1972, SEWA is the largest organization of female entrepreneurs in the world, with 1.9 million members, it is the largest non-profit organization in India. It is a very relevant association, not only because of the number of women that it brings together, but also because in addition to helping them improve the quality of employment, it also focuses on improving the quality of life in different aspects such as health care, child care and shelter.

India’s history and modern culture of female subjugation also contributes to this disparity because traditional gender roles exclude women from regular, secure forms of labour. Taking SEWA’s multidimensional approach into account, the Poverty Stoplight will be a valuable contribution not only to measure the impact it has on women’s lives, but also to empower its members to become even more protagonists of their own exit from poverty.

Over these 6 days of work, Eduardo visited several women’s committees in urban and rural areas in order to get to know their opinion on the different Poverty Stoplight indicators and adapt them to the local reality; thus, India has its first Poverty Stoplight. In the coming months, the Poverty Stoplight team, together with the SEWA team, will be carrying out an extended Poverty Stoplight pilot with women from the Gujarat region.

“We were able to share with members of SEWA in the city of Anand and talk about issues such as housing quality, health and self-sufficiency; we started to build the local poverty stoplight indicators that are already taking shape and will be validated later by them,” said Eduardo regarding his visit.