Neetaben is an Anganwadi (pre-school) program coordinator at Manav Sadnha. One of her struggles is communicating with the 80+ Anganwadi teachers she manages, who work in different slums across Ahmedabad. These ladies mostly have no email addresses, speak Gujarati, and have limited experience with SMS. Typically, Neetaben would dispatch written circulares (telegrams) hand-delivered to coordinate and communicate about news, events, trainings, and meetings. This process was slow, tedious, and expensive.
Two weeks ago Neetaben began using Streams. Now she sends voice-based alerts, reminders, and notifications to the teachers about twice a week. Neetaben is thrilled with Streams, as she saves significant time and effort in communicating with her teachers.
Neetaben: “I’ll give you a real example. The other day I had to invite all the Anganwadi workers who had not undergone any training in last 18 months for a meeting. Earlier in this kind of case I had to call all of the anganwadi workers, find out if they had taken any training in last 18 months, and invite them if not. I used to spend almost an entire day in this process. But now, with Awaaz De’s system I just sent a voice message to all of them. And to my surprise the next day all anganwadi workers who required to be present were actually present in the meeting hall!”
The teachers are also excited to receive information easily and in their own language, without any special technical knowledge. They appreciate that now they can hear the “official” word on program updates straight from the coordinator, rather than relying on second-hand hearsay from another teacher.
Says one teacher: “Whenever we receive any voice call from Neetaben’s steam number we stop all our work and pay full attention to listen to the call. We know there is always going to be some important information for us. Even if we miss it first time, we call back again and listen the information.”
