Sangeeta Ben walks her daily route working as a waste picker in an Ahmedabad slum. She provides an essential door-to-door collection service for 240 households and a hospital in the neighbourhood, helping to keep the area clean. Mahila Housing Trust (MHT), a NGO that improves the housing conditions of poor, informally employed women, helped organize the collection service so that Sangeeta now earns a regular income of 5,000-7,000 rupees per month. Photo credit: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images Reportage
As part of India Climate Week, WIEGO, Janpahal and the Self-Employed Women’s Association of Delhi are organizing an event to bring workers in informal employment into national climate discourse.
Through a narrative panel discussion, workers from different sectors of the informal economy – waste pickers, home-based workers, construction workers, delivery drivers, street vendors and domestic workers – will share their experience with navigating heat and a changing climate.
Participants will then draw on these grounded experiences and split into cross-sectoral groups to reflect on the coping and adaptation strategies they already use, what these strategies cost them, and what support would make them more effective. The event will draw on short film screenings and a street theatre performance to further deepen discussion and explore the themes emerging from the day.
Groups will identify concrete demands from government, employers and other institutions, producing a shared, worker-authored set of priorities for the discussions that follow during India Climate Week.
Demands and key issues identified during this event will feed into a subsequent WIEGO event on September 29 on, “Heat Policy and the Informal Economy: A Technical and Policy Dialogue” which will bring together government stakeholders and other policy actors.
About India Climate Week 2026
India Climate Week is a nationwide, community-owned platform for climate action which is jointly run by a coalition of organizations to showcase what’s working, help people understand climate change and connect individuals and organizations working on climate who wouldn’t normally interact.
Register to attend(this link opens in new window)
