Research Officer – CEHAT (Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes)
We have worked with grassroots organizations and assisted them to carry out research based on their service records and in-house documentation. These organisations work on the issue of violence against women by providing support services like legal aid and counselling. Their service records contain a lot of important information: history of violence or abuse, services provided, expectations and response from official bodies, etc. However, these organizations are focused on immediate service provision and there is lack of resource and capacity to analyse their records and produce evidence and to strategize their own interventions. Through their work, they may intuitively know what is working and what is not in relation to police response or the healthcare system; but what if they have to advocate something with a stakeholder? They need to show, for example, that during a month denial of filing an FIR happened in 30 out of 50 cases received. We train the organisations to be able to routinely analyse their records and produce such evidence around it, and this also helps to share knowledge and evidence with other organisations working in the field.