Women and Water Network – India (South Zone)
A note 

A consultative meeting was held on 12-13 October 2001, in Thrissur in Kerala initiated by SASTAC and supported by UNIFEM to set up Women and Water Network (WWN-I) for the South Zone of India. It had earlier been decided that given the large geographical area of the country the networks would be constituted according to zones in order to give a better representation. The meeting was coordinated by SEUF, a local NGO working in the water sector among other issues. During the two-day meeting extensive discussions were held on issues of transparency, inclusiveness and good governance within theses networks as well as without. The gender consultant from Royal Netherlands Embassy from New Delhi was actively involved and took a keen interest in the proceedings to ensure an open discussion and democratic decision-making. At the end of the workshop it was decided to structure the network as follows - each of the four states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were asked to conduct state level meetings of organizations / individuals working in the water sector and identify state lead organization that would liaise all the work for the state and federate with the zonal committee that comprises four of these state lead organizations.

It was agreed that similar networks would be established for the western and eastern zone and finally this would be federated at the national level to chalk out the local, regional and national issues and plan of activities. The state networks are supposed to further sub-divide into regional (cluster of districts with similar agro-climatic conditions) representation and try and map out the grass root organizations, issues, problems, and priorities. These concerns would then form the basis of advocacy, policy change and campaigns to negotiate a more gender sensitive water deal at the macro level. The following lead organizations were identified through state level water groups.