Kajal Jain

Program Coordinator – MASUM

Pune, Maharashtra – India

Kajal has been at MASUM for nine years and coordinates the women’s health program. MASUM has five main programs, with three coordinators and 17 staff. Most of Kajal’s work originally focused on nutrition and sanitation, but she soon saw that many health outcomes were due to poverty and limited livelihood options.

Currently, Kajal focuses on RH/FP access through a rights-based approach—she empowers women to articulate their needs and demand their rights. She manages a network of women across 50 villages and helps them advocate with local village councils to access government schemes. She also oversees a self-help group network of 3,000 members, linking them to other organizations, banks, and CSR support/training.

Kajal has a vision for strengthening MASUM as an organization. Her leadership style is very collaborative and she has a nuanced understanding of the conditions that men and women face in access to services and negotiating at home. With her early experience in community-based monitoring, she is results oriented in a framework that is focused on tangible outcomes for women and communities.

Rise Up Cohort: CIP India – 2018