India: ANANDI, Gujarat

ANANDI (Area Networking for Development Initiatives) is a women’s empowerment organisation working with women in tribal, muslim and scheduled caste communities of Gujarat in Eastern India.

GALS and PALS tools for gender action research were central to a 2003 participatory review of empowerment achievements of their organisation, focusing particularly on response to the 2001 earthquake that devastated the area.

Key GALS innovations with ANANDI were:

• Use of Diamond tool for Gender-Based Violence to identify a hierarchy of types of violence experienced by women, and the extent of such violence including attempted murder by husband. Initially all women denied that violence existed.
• Use of Diamond Tool for gender differences in food security
• Use of network circle tool for raising awareness of social networks, even for women who thought they were alone
• Potential to adapt ANANDI’s existing Area Networking Events as self-funding gender events using GALS.