Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) founded in April 1997, is a network of individuals and institutions from three broad constituencies membership-based organizations (MBOs), researchers and statisticians and professionals from development agencies (inter-governmental, governmental, and non-governmental). It is a global action-research-policy network that seeks to improve the status of the working poor in the informal economy, especially women. WIEGO seeks to increase the voice, visibility, and validity of the working poor. Economic empowerment of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy is WIEGO’s mission.