Case study

Collecting Data to Monitor Rural Empowerment

Overview

The Swades Foundation used Collect to continuously monitor its rural empowerment and holistic development initiatives for women in Maharashtra.

Partner

Swades Foundation

Sector

Philanthropy

1 mil.

people to be impacted

75,000

survey responses

250

surveyors

6

development verticals

The Problem

Using holistic development to develop India’s villages

The Swades Foundation aims to create permanent, irreversible change in the lives of 1 million people in rural India. They work for rural empowerment in the Raigarh district of Maharashtra, where they conduct holistic development across 6 verticals — community mobilization, water and sanitation, agriculture and dairy, livelihoods, health and nutrition, and education.

The Solution

Regularly collecting household-level data

The Swades Foundation partnered with us to capture data from the field on a real-time basis. They use Collect, our mobile data collection app, to collect data on demography, education, agriculture, livestock, sanitation, indebtedness, and more in the villages where they work.

20 question types
No code, no hassle
Create data validations
Add skip logic
  • With everything from simple subjective questions to complex tabular questions, collecting comprehensive data was no problem.

  • Our simple web dashboard made creating a form as easy as writing an email. Admins could build a custom survey in no time.

  • Admins could set rules on numerical questions, geographic boundaries on GPS points, selection limits for multiple choice questions, and more.

  • Layers of skip logic made each form quicker and easier. Admins can choose to link together multiple questions, or even link entire forms.

Optimized for low-tech users
No internet needed
Robust language support
Geotagging each household
  • The Swades Foundation has hundreds of field staff. Training this many people can take a long time. However, Collect’s intuitive interface helped staff learn the app in no time.

  • India’s villages are prone to terrible service. Collected data was continuously saved to phones' local storage, then synced when internet was available.

  • To collect data in Maharashtra, the Swades Foundation needed an app in Marathi. Surveyors could convert the entire Collect app to Marathi with a click of a button.

  • The Swades Foundation captured the GPS location of every household. This helped them find geographic insights and ensure that their data was authentic.

Learn more about Collect

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