Community Meetings

Community meetings and events are an integral part of the Maternal and Young Child Health Initiative. These community meetings not only provide a safe space for female residents to discuss health issues with female health professionals, but, equally important, provide a forum for social interaction and empowerment among women of this slum. For nearly two years, relationships between the Calcutta Kids workers and these women have flourished in part because of these community events.


Each community meeting focuses on a specific health issue and its management. Topics of discussion include:

• -diarrheal diseases
• -worm infestation
• -acute respiratory infection
• -skin diseases
• -infant and child care
• -self care
• -contraceptive use and management
• -hygiene practices.

At the beginning of each meeting, women present their own experiences and understandings of these problems. Health workers then work from these experiences and perceptions, seeking to provide the women with a more complete understanding of the causality of particular illnesses and, in turn, the best way to prevent and treat them. Quiz sessions often follow to determine whether the women have understood the messages, and to permit clarification where necessary. Most important, however, is watching these women put counseling lessons into practice, learning for themselves that they work, and then passing on the wisdom to friends and neighbors.


When community meetings resumed after several had been cancelled due to the heavy rains during the 2007 monsoon, one community member said aloud, “We’ve been missing the meetings! They give us a place to feel free.”