Day 3 Oct 20 2009 - Finally we meet our clients!

After having received Gavin's and Arjun's briefing on Monday, Tuesday finally is the big day - we meet our clients. Based on our applications and profiles all of our team have been assigned to one of four projects, with two or three of us as a project team. We all have read our statements of work multiple times but today is the day that we get face to face with our clients for the very first time, quite an exciting moment. The four project / project teams are:

• Eva & Dominik: Indicorps
• Rich, Mapje & Annamarie: Ashoka
• Soon & Stefan: Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA)
• Susanne & Per: Tribal Development Department of Gujarat

Following a brief welcome by Gavin and an overview of IBM India by Col. Pandey, each of our clients introduces their respective organisation and the projects that we will be working in. Not a single one that one would not love to be part of but since we all have limited time here in India, we will focus soley on our assigned projects - which does not mean that we will not have a chance to visit the other project teams at their projects.

Soon and I will be working together with SEWA, the self employed women's association - an organsation we so far know knew little about. SEWA in short is an organisation of poor, self-employed women here in India. The main objective is to support and enable these women for a full emloyment so that they can make a decent living. SEWA has about 1 million members, of which about half reside in the state of Gujarat. Next to the representation of its members SEWA provides services such as insurance, banking, child and health care, education and training, housing, legal support and more. After having read the speech of SEWA at the United Nations assembly in 2008 I really understood what SEWA is all about.

Soon and I will take over from our predecessor team Manuel and Kensuke and work on the design of a new membership management system as well as on a concept for the use of ICT enabling SEWA to offer more services to its members and to work more efficiently.

The evening we spent close to the Ginger hotel at a nearby small lake and park within walking distance where we become an attraction, especially for the kids who love to have their pictures taken by us.