Bridging The Knowledge Asymmetry Through WhatsApp : A Case Study of Uttarakhand

Digital technology has enabled accessing knowledge a little easier than it used to be earlier. With the advent of WhatsApp, people are now able?to share information almost instantly. However, the reality of the situation remains that many grassroots women in our country still do not possess smartphones or are able to tap into the internet. This access to technology when viewed from a gendered lens shows that women from marginalized communities are heavily dependent on the male members of their households to use a smartphone. But for those who have been able to cross this barrier, digital tools have opened gateways for learning about socio-economic rights and exercising them.?

?Under the USAID-supported Udyami program, SEWA Bharat has provided women microentrepreneurs with smartphones in an attempt to bridge the gender divide that exists in owning digital infrastructure.

In SEWA Bharat’s experience, smartphones have become an important tool for informal women workers in sharing and receiving information at the grassroots. During the second wave of COVID-19, women were relying on Information, Education, Communication (IEC) content created by the communications team to receive timely and accurate information on how to fight the pandemic. Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials are resources that are used to convey important information related to government schemes, health, and other crucial topics that can benefit people. These include posters, flyers, videos, brochures, leaflets, and so on.

?These IEC resources were filling an important gap as the rapidly evolving COVID-19 guidelines were primarily aimed at an English-speaking literate audience. They failed to incorporate the lived realities of our bens. To address this, SEWA Bharat’s communications team created IEC resources in various formats and in six Indian languages that were actively disseminated among the informal women workers via WhatsApp. The efforts of our bens were pivotal in the dissemination. For example, SEWA members in Delhi used the ‘Forward Five’ rule, where each ben shared the IEC video with five others, thus improving the last-mile reach.

Uttarakhand’s WhatsApp Pilot

The IEC dissemination strategy became one of the most essential mediums for critical information sharing, at a time when social distancing became the norm. After a brainstorming session, it was decided that digital technology should now be leveraged further. Hence, a pilot was started in Uttarakhand, where WhatsApp was used as a medium to disseminate IEC videos. Government schemes, digital literacy, financial literacy, and standard health practices were some of the topics around which IEC content was made and circulated, in the form of posters and videos. To make the video content more relatable, the team regularly produces short animated video explainers that capture contextual realities. Support was also taken from aagewans, the grassroots community leaders, in identifying relevant video topics which would be useful to our bens.??

The aagewans use these resources in improving?awareness through mohalla meetings, and group discussions. A feedback session was conducted to gauge the effectiveness of WhatsApp as a medium. Following this, a monitoring and evaluation (MEL) system was also created to document the dissemination process, and identify the gaps in sharing the content on the ground. Aagewans from the state informed us that the video on ‘What is an SSK’? (SEWA Shakti Kendra) was well received, and bens preferred audio-visual format as IECs. SEWA Shakti Kendras are one-stop centers that enable informal women workers to access their rights and entitlements. During interactions, aagewans requested IEC content on methods of income diversification, menstrual health, nutrition, and how to grow vegetables in a polyhouse.?

Way Forward

As this pilot began to improve the awareness on the ground, SEWA Bharat’s communications team decided to map the IEC needs of 8 states where it directly works.?The communications team regularly has also been holding meetings with these states, to identify preferred languages and formats for IEC content that is well-received by our bens.?According to a recent study conducted by IWWAGE, in partnership with Lead Krea University and SEWA Bharat, over 70% of 3,400 SEWA members of different trades interviewed in West Bengal and Jharkhand learned about their entitlements from SEWA. IEC material thus has the potential to support SEWA Bharat in building awareness among informal women workers about their rights and entitlements in a targeted manner. These IEC strategies of communication, when coupled with the right kind of digital tools that are available, sustain and encourage positive behavior through bridging knowledge asymmetry, eventually reducing social disparities.