• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • Join the IGWG
  • News & Updates

IGWG HomepageIGWG

  • Priority Areas
    • Gender-Based Violence
    • Gender-Based Violence Task Force
    • Male Engagement
    • Male Engagement Task Force
    • Youth and Gender
  • Resources
    • Trainings
    • K4Health Gender and Health Toolkit
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • About the IGWG
    • Our Priority Areas
    • The Gender Integration Continuum
    • Get the Benefits of an IGWG membership
  • News & Updates
  • Join the IGWG
  • Contact

CGD

Turning Trash into Social Value: Can a Private Sector Model Work for Poor Women in India?

Posted on January 22, 2018

Featuring

Mayra Buvinic, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

Nedra Dickson, Global Supplier Diversity and Sustainability Lead, Accenture

Henriette Kolb, Head of the Gender Secretariat, International Finance Corporation

Elizabeth Vazquez, President, CEO and Co-Founder, WEConnect International

Melanne Verveer, Executive Director, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security

Moderator

Rajesh Mirchandani, Vice-President of Communication and Policy Outreach, Center for Global Development

Women are overrepresented in the informal sector worldwide, often stuck in dangerous, insecure, low-paid jobs. Waste picking in particular is a highly vulnerable and risky form of informal employment. In 1995, India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) organized women waste pickers in Ahmedabad into a cooperative to improve their working conditions and livelihoods. Over time, this informal arrangement evolved into Gitanjali – a women-owned and -run social enterprise, that produces a full range of stationery products for large multinational corporations, including Staples, IBM, and Goldman Sachs.

What difference has Gitanjali made to the lives and opportunities of women waste pickers in India? What are the implications for women’s social enterprises in other countries? What are the challenges that remain to be overcome? The Center for Global Development is delighted to bring together some of the key private sector partners that helped Gitanjali generate social value, along with practitioners from the public sector and multilateral financial institutions, for a robust discussion about job options for poor women in low paid, informal occupations, including a model entrepreneurship venture. The event will be informed by the CGD report, The Gitanjali Cooperative: A Social Enterprise in the Making.

Copies of the report’s executive summary will be provided. Light refreshments will be available.

Center for Global Development
2055 L St, NW – Fifth Floor
Washington, DC 20036

Footer

Learn More

  • Male Engagement Task Force
  • Gender-based Violence Task Force
  • About the IGWG
  • Contact Us
  • Photo Credits

Follow us:

Join the IGWG

We send out two to three newsletters per week to over 2,600 members interested in the IGWG and other gender-related news.

Subscribe

* indicates required

Gender Continuum

Feedback Form
  • If you are comfortable doing so, please share your email address so we can follow up on your feedback.