Our Story
Sri Ram Janki Social Service Foundation is a non-profit organisation that works with women, children and families in communities; and with public health and safety systems. Our innovative work in vulnerable settlements aims to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity, child malnutrition, reduce adolescent anaemia and gender-based violence – all key determinants of health equity for the family and the community at large.
MSSW India Journey
In the early 2000s, neonatologist Dr. Armida Fernandez and her team were routinely caring for underweight and premature infants born into low-income households. These households often faced poor nutritional and health outcomes,especially among mothers and children. Dr. Fernandez and her team wanted to develop sustainable interventions that would go beyond simply providing stop gap solutions. They spent time in Mumbai’s low-income settlements, learning about the compounding challenges of lack of information, resources and access to quality health services. MSSW was thus established in 1999 to work on the twin goals of improving health-seeking behaviour among underserved communities and improving quality of public health services. Today, MSSW is a 500+ person-strong organisation with extensive on-ground experience in helping build healthy lives of urban women and children. Its vision, mission and values affirm its commitment to the health of vulnerable women, children and families. We are working towards bridging the health equity gap and going beyond fighting illness to ‘Raising Health for All’.
Areas of Work
We work across vulnerable settlements in Patna, Muzzafarpur, Darbhanga, Gaya, Arrah, Bettiah, Aurangabad and Bhagalpur. We work closely with the Municipal Corporation of Patna and the surrounding cities of Gaya, Purnia, Vaishali, Rohtas, Buxar and Saran.
We have worked in partnership with other organisations in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand.
Message from the CEO
ABCD
I’m greatly inspired by our team’s relentless search for newer and better ways to address public health concerns. We dig deep to understand underlying causes, we try new things, we sometimes fail, but our pursuit for solutions carries on. Looking forward, we strive to continuously adapt our models and build strong partnerships to develop evidence-based, scalable and sustainable public health interventions.
I’m often asked what my long term plan for MSSW is. I actually hope that in the long run, there will be no need for MSSW!
I hope that every woman has access to quality and affordable health systems and is empowered enough to make the right choices for her own health and the health of her family. Until then, we must pull together our resources, our thoughts, our efforts and our spirit, so that one day we will achieve our dream of a world in which every child is born healthy, everyone has access to quality health services, and all families live in peace.
RAISING HEALTH FOR ALL
