Day 16 Nov 2 2009 - First glance at SEWA systems, amazing laundry service

During the previous week, Soon and I had spoken with Mohammadi, that we would someone from the IT team to work closely together with us, so that basically there was a permanent hand over to the SEWA staff rather than just at the end. Mohammadi had agreed to let Vishal (one of SEWA's HW experts) work together with, so this Monday we had or first meeting to go with him through the use cases we had had modeled and documented. We also asked Vishal to give us a demo of the system they use so that we would get a better understanding of how it works and what data it contains, so that we could reflect this in our work.

SEWA has been using a membership management application beginning this year. Previously most work had been done only paper-based. Do collect comprehensive data to be able to provide better services to SEWA members as well as to improve deicsion making, SEWA is currently also piloting a system to gather additional data from its members.

On the way back I collected my laundry from a little laundry shop just across from the Himalaya Mall. Whenever I pick my clothes up there I am amazed to see that they have all been tagged with little signs so that they know to whom or to which order the clothes belong. Not only that, all my clothes have been ironed including my underwear - I am not too sure about the socks though - and folded neatly around a piece of paper and put on a hanger. When I pick the clothes up, they are again wrapped in a paper held by some string before they are bagged. All this for 15 Rupees (= 0,20-0,25 €) a piece. Quite amazing. I for sure will miss this when I am back in Germany.