| Activity | The main aim of the CEZMS was to evangelise the women of India by means of normal schools [teacher training colleges], zenana visiting, medical missions, Hindu and Muslim female schools and the employment of Bible women. The Society was to work in close co-operation with the Church Missionary Society.
CEZMS missionaries began teaching in zenanas and day-schools. The chief stations were Trivandrum, Palamcotta (Sarah Tucker College), Masulipatam and Madras in South India, Meerut (handed over to CMS 1893), Jabalpur, Calcutta (Normal School) and Amritsar (Alexandra School) in North India.
Medical work was of great importance. The Society had taken over the work at Amritsar (St. Catherines' hospital) and other hospitals and dispensareis were established in Bhagalpur, Srinagar, Peshawar (Connaught hospital), Batala, Narowal and Tarn Taran.
Work was also done by village missions, a central village from which evangelists visited dozens of villages grouped around the centre. The chief places for these in the 1880s were Jandiala, Ajnala, Narowal, Tarn Taran and Nadiya.
Industrial work was begun in 1883, with a class at Amritsar.
There was also work amongst the 'deaf and dumb' in India (at Palamcotta from 1900, Mylapore from 1914) and amongst the blind in China at Kucheng, and Nantai, Foochow.
Work at home focussed on supporting the missionaries and their work overseas: directly through recruitment, training, on-going support, liaison with mission stations and overseas stakeholders, fundraising and promotional work (exhibitions, deputations, conferences, and publication); indirectly by working through networks of local Associations, Working Parties, Unions and individual supporters ('friends') in England, Ireland, Wales, Belgium, France, Italy, Australia and Tasmania, New Zealand and Canada. |