We're delighted to announce that the charity Women In Need has asked CC to rate them.
You can find their rating here.
About the charity
The charity has continued to operate since August 2000, helping women who suffer from Leprosy in the slums of Nagpur, India. Leah and Usha met in 1995 and established the organisation START, which initially operated on the back of a scooter using funds from their own pockets.
START has since come under the umbrella of its sister organisation Women In Need (WIN)*, extending the work already set up through START. In treating patients with Leprosy, it soon became clear that so many other women in the slums were suffering with a variety of health and socio-economic problems. They too were abandoned by society and desperately needed help.
They are now able to treat women with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and severe depression, those who have contracted HIV/AIDS through circumstances out of their control, even women who have been abandoned by their husbands and have no means to support themselves or their children. They are now treating many women living in Nagpur and beyond the city. Using better transport, we now have a Drop-In Centre and operate a shelter at Dattapur.
Whether an Indian woman requires medical treatment, the means to set up her own business or simply needs a shoulder to cry on, WIN says they are there to support them in whatever way we can and to reassure them they are not alone.
How CC worked with them
After reviewing publicly available information about WIN, we were able to gain further information from the trustees around the impact they make and the way they report. In particular, we gathered helpful information around their trustee and governance processes and enabled CC to give them a higher rating than if we had just used third-party information.
What this means for other charities
Despite WIN being a small charity, they were able to open themselves to outside scrutiny and work with CC to see whether their relative strengths and areas of development were. If you are a charity that would like to have a conversation around how we can help, please contact us at [email protected].
* (Still known as START under India's Charity Commission – Public Trust No. 19706).