WIEGO: Communicative Daily Life Stories to Assess Social Impact in the Lives of Informal Workers

Abstract

WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) is a global research-policy network that seeks to improve the status of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy. The members of this network are individual researchers, individual development practitioners, and organizations of informal workers, which total more than 175 affiliates in 85 countries. Social researchers involved in the network conducted qualitative fieldwork in these communities and monitor the social impact of research. The researchers created spaces for dialogue and collected workers’ impact stories through diverse qualitative tools and in different contexts, especially narratives and focus groups. The aim was to increase the visibility of informal workers, their living and working conditions, and their personal experience with regard to the social impact of urban policies. Through communicative daily life stories to social researchers working at WIEGO, this article analyzes how they are socially impacting the lives of informal workers. Based on this connection, all information related to social impact is interpreted through a communicative approach, connecting the stories of the social researchers and the interpretation of informal workers’ lives to evidence-based actions.