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We are writing our own history. We are just ordinary women. We began by learning about our own bodies then we taught other women. Together we learn that we have the right to control our own bodies. - Action India Community Health Worker

We roamed the forests in Saharanpur looking at plants, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and to our joy and surprise discovered that some of the fauna flora still exists in and around the city where we live. We learnt the ayurvedic way of preparing herbal medicine for an ayurvaid doctor and, for the first time, we actually treated common ailments of women and their children, and men. We also learnt to feel the pulse to diagnose the imbalance in the system which causes ill health.

-Action India Community Health Worker

Women`s Health and Reproductive Rights Programme

Reproductive Health has been the foundation of Action India’s Women’s Programme. In 1984, with the guidance of doctors, we trained twenty community-based women to develop a holistic and feminist approach to health. The program, in its widest context, works to change the status of women through gender consciousness, nutrition, and fertility awareness. Our community health workers (CHWs) continue their work in numerous communities surrounding Delhi. As they learn and put their knowledge to practice, they pass on their learning to other women—a process that works through a multiplier effect.

The topics covered include:

Fertility Awareness
Groups of ten to twelve women meet once a week with an Action India community-based health worker for six months regularly. Approximately 300 women are reached every year. Our program covers the gamut of a woman’s life cycle – her body, her creative potential, and her freedom of choice.

Informed Choice and Family Planning
We disseminate information about safe contraception, and the pros and cons of contraceptive options. We insist on the right to make our own decision about when and how many children we want. We inform women about population control - our research on the impact of sterilization on women’s health reveals that poor women are made the targets of population control.

Violence is a Health Issue
No health program can be effective without addressing the questions of domestic violence and sexual harassment, unemployment and questions of livelihood, migration, and displacement. We began our Women, Law, and Social Change program to delve more deeply into these issues.

Apni Rasoi (In Our Kitchen)
Health, nutition and gender are all intricately connected to the construction of food. Situated in the kitchen, women from different regions share their culinary practices and the medicinal values of spices and food. Apni Rasoi is a weekly program conducted in four sessions over forty weeks, bringing together the voices of 400 women per year.

Self Help Centres
We began four centres in the resettlement colonies of Delhi for women of all religions and castes to come together to learn about health. Women gather to speak about marital concerns, gynecological ailments, and general health problems, without shame or hesitation.

We use a wide variety of first-hand research materials to teach new concepts. A listing of our publications can be found here.

To learn more about or contribute to our women-centered health programmes, please contact Action India.

5/27A Jangpura B New Delhi 110 014, India
Phone: +91 (011) 2437 7470 Phone/Fax: +91 (011) 2437 4785 Email: actionindia1976@gmail.com

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