Initiative Taken By Self Employed Women’s Association To Improve Livelihoods And Health & Nutrition Condition

With an aim to counter innumerable unfair and corrupt practices that kept the earnings of women working in unorganized sector so low, Ela Bhatt started a union with them named as Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in 1972. SEWA is a membership-based organization to assist and empower women in informal economy in their fight for social justice, equality and fair treatment. SEWA started as a trade union in Gujarat working for urban areas but post 1980 it successfully extended its reach to rural areas and other states. It raised from an organization to a movement with 1. 41 million members active across 13 states of India1. Its state level unions are affiliates of the national union SEWA Bharat, federation of all SEWA organizations. SEWA’s core goal is to organize and strengthen poor women through full employment and self reliance. The first initiative towards this was SEWA Bank, to provide access to financial services which would help them to upgrade their business and productivity thus increasing income.

SEWA members are engaged principally in three ways which are union, cooperatives and member services. Union helps members in their collective struggle for fair treatment and path to justice, to markets and services. Cooperatives, that help members produce and market their produce and build assets where as member services are financed partly by user fees and partially by donors and by government departments that couldn’t provide services as per the policies. SEWA’s union membership is composed of four types of self-employed women workers namely

• Hawkers, vendors and small business women like vegetable, fruit, fish, egg and other vendors of food items, household goods and clothes vendors.
• Home based workers like weavers, potters, bidi and agarbatti workers, papad rollers, ready-made garment workers, women who process agricultural products and artisans.
• Manual laborers and service providers like agricultural laborers, construction workers, contract laborers, handcart pullers, head – loaders, domestic workers and laundry workers.
• Producers and service providers like who invest their labor and capital to carry out their businesses. This category includes Agriculture, cattle farmers, salt workers, gum collectors, cooking & vending etc.

These categories have 126 subcategories in total and each SEWA member is assigned to a sub category which forms the foundation of SEWA’s governance technique.

How SEWA improved Livelihoods, Health and Nutrition of Poor People in India?

The success behind SEWA’s success in increasing livelihoods and employment along with improvement of health scenario in rural India is its integrated and multisectoral manner of addressing the health outcomes and welfare of women to promote and improve health. The main objective of SEWA is to organize self-employed women for upliftment of their social and economic status. Their efforts were directed towards full employment of its members to help them achieve food, work, income and social security. All these subsequently led to improved wealth and health. SEWA works with women producers across the country, through cooperatives and other sister organization, protecting and promoting artisan and local industries. As per SEWA members, health is directly related to the ability to work and the productivity levels and income generated thereafter. SEWA realizes that its members need to be healthy to avoid loss of workdays. Therefore, most activities at SEWA have a health component and health actions which in turn are linked to producers’ groups, workers’ trade committee, self-help groups (SHGs) and their economic activities. SHGs are independently managed by self-employed women of villages and head of a SHG is elected by respective group members.

Livelihoods

SEWA strengthened the livelihood and employment prospects for poor and marginalized women across India through following approaches

Skill Development – Women in marginalized communities remain restrained by technical and marketing skills. SEWA invests in technical, marketing, business and entrepreneurship skillset.

Artisans Support Program and Weavers Support Program – Through these programs SEWA positively transformed traditional skills of rural self-employed women into enterprises providing sustainable livelihoods and income. SEWA has organized around 250, 000 and 3000 artisans and weavers respectively through this program.

Salt Farming - SEWA first started childcare and education initiative for children of agria women self employed salt farmers from the Surendranagar district. SEWA has organized 8, 000 of them into grassroots groups and a district organization called the Surendranagar Women and Child Development Mandal, to improve their bargaining power over salt traders

Agriculture - As the majority of SEWA’s rural members are small farmers, SEWA has organized almost 3, 100 farmers in Gujarat alone, and has been involved in an Agriculture Campaign since 1995 to provide harvesting and technical trainings to farmers at the village level. This campaign aids small and marginalized farmers to access existing government developmental schemes.

Market Linkages – Many self-employed residents of rural areas are limited by local markets and resources for their produce. SEWA plays a functional role here by creating, strengthening, and diversifying forward and backward linkages to connect members. This is especially for rural self-employed women with limited or zero access to mainstream markets due to their rural isolation, and so are forced to depend on middlemen and other third parties.

Market Linkage for Artisans

SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre (STFC) was established in the year 2000 with a vision to ensure women artisans in any sector have socio-economic security and full employment, by building a grassroots’ business enterprise for the artisans and of the artisans. STFC achieves this by sustained, gainful, and efficient coordination of the design, making and marketing of their products and services in mainstream national and international markets. An integrated supply chain of STFC centrally connects self-employed women artisans to quality control, packaging and distribution center in Ahmedabad.

There are numerous artisans’ groups created by SEWA in rural areas and linked to state level associations and SEWA – owned retail outlets in bigger cities like Banascraft, Kutchcraft and Banaskantha DWCRA Mahila SEWA Association (BDMSA), a district-level association which links together all the producers’ groups created under the DWCRA plan and honed with SEWA’s efforts.

Market Linkage for Farmers

SEWA Gram Mahila Haat co-founded by SEWA and State Department of Rural Development is a state level marketing organization targeted to reduce dependence on traders by provision of direct technical, financial and marketing facilities to rural producers (from agriculture to salt, forestry and handicrafts) so that they can reach large corporate bulk buyers.

SGMH started an initiative named the Rural Urban Distribution Initiative (RUDI), which gave birth to a multi-trading company and brand named “RUDI” in 2006. Under this initiative SEWA created farmers’ organizations named District Associations (DAs), which bought the produce of small farmers and direct them to the processing and packaging centers which were then sold by them under the brand RUDI. RUDI Company enables direct promotion and marketing of the agro commodities procured through Farmer’s Association in the rural retail network of farmers and agriculture labourers across villages in Gujarat’s 14 districts.

Institutional Development – Women producer owned cooperatives and producer companies are established and guided by SEWA which allows these people to work at scale and penetrate bigger and better markets. SEWA partnered with many different organizations including government to create sustainable livelihoods in rural India and backs women-managed economic structures, such as cooperatives and enterprises, primarily by linking them to state-level associations like BDMSA and Kutchcraft Association. It also provides important inputs in management training and technical capacity building.

SEWA Academy and SEWA Managers’ School (SMS)

These initiatives by SEWA were focused to train members and mobilize them towards economic self sustainability through managerial and leadership skill development. This in turn helped in efficiency of SEWA governance at different levels yielding better results from the implementation of developmental schemes. Community Learning Centers (CLCs) aimed at providing computer literacy to the members and their families initiated by SEWA in partnership with Microsoft was a huge success.

Gujarat State Women’s SEWA Cooperative Federation (SEWA Cooperative Federation) is a secondary level cooperative that has 115 primary cooperative societies as its members. Member cooperatives are supported by offering them capacity building and marketing of their products among other services. Women managers are found in majority of the cooperatives, who have been workers themselves and have moved to their current roles for their skills, talent and intelligence, with capacity-building support from SEWA.

SEWA Bank, founded in 1974 is a registered cooperative bank to help poor women acquire loan and financial support which was a constraint in traditional banking system. This helped to inculcate the habit of saving in self-employed women of informal sector. Also, SEWA bank had countermeasure to the problem of illiteracy by launching a system based on photo identity cards for opening accounts, retrieving information, and withdrawals. It provided business support services by linking the members to government subsidies which could benefit their business, help them in constructive usage of loan money and to negotiate price with wholesalers. In rural areas, the democratically chosen leader of SHG would apply for loan on behalf of group as per to group’s savings. The SEWA Bank is user friendly and works as a ‘mobile bank’ to facilitate deposits by home-based workers. Members are encouraged to save money which has a direct influence on their overall living conditions. SEWA Banks also initiated incentive schemes where interest rate would be reduced for those who have taken a minimum of two loans and have paid their installments on time.

This initiative brought financial institutions closer to rural women in many states and simultaneously increased entrepreneurship among the women, built individual and collective capital and promoted asset creation. Their upgraded work and business skills have raised their income. This has led to improved health, nutrition and education of the women and their families. These women have greater self-esteem and confidence today and can demand better status in their community.

Gujarat Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT) was created in 1994 with a mission to develop the overall living environment of members via better access to basic services like financial, legal and technical assistance for housing purposes. SEWA partnered with Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and the community for an initiative that provided seven infrastructure facilities in the slums. These facilities included individual water supply, individual sewage, individual toilets, paved roads, streetlights, basic solid waste management and storm water drainage. Ujala Yojana’s (slum electrification programme) launch provided electricity to community households and has boosted their work capacities (for e. g. , women engaged in livelihood through sewing), consequently raising their incomes. This excess income was further saved in the SEWA Bank and efficiently utilized in improving their living conditions.

Livelihood Security Fund

Backed by experience and expertise in building regional development programmes in disaster-prone areas of Gujarat, SEWA sketched a livelihood security strategy for disaster readiness and mitigation. SEWA started a "Livelihood Security Task Force", constituting representatives from the Government of India (GoI), NGOs and experts in the implementation of disaster mitigation and rehabilitation schemes. On the basis of this plan, a "Livelihood Security Fund" started operating which would act as a vulnerability and risk reduction measure for marginalized communities and offer livelihood security through sustainable economic programmes, based on local skills and resources. The Fund would be revolving fund and used as working capital for each district, towards the production of craft, salt and fodder goods.

Health & nutrition

SEWA felt that the members’ ability to work was compromised by their own ill health or the poor health of family members. Health care services were lacking and this is when SEWA stepped in to provide and strengthen preventive and curative health care. Social security organizations like Lok Swasthya SEWA Health cooperative, Shramshakti cooperative, Dai (midwives), Shramlaxmi Dai Cooperative, Shri Krishna Dai Cooperative, Sangini and Shaishav Childcare and Vimo-SEWA were initiated in order encourage health and associate it SEWA’s economic activities. There is a strong component of training the health workers for delivery of cheap medicines and primary health care services. Likewise, communities are made aware of their health (mainly maternal and child health) and nutrition needs, and basic hygiene by these trained health workers. A team of dedicated trained leaders (aagewans) and paramedical staff (barefoot doctors and midwives) provided unified health services at the doorstep of the members.

Lok Swasthya SEWA Healthcare Cooperative, in association with AIDS Control Society of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, has taken up AIDS awareness and prevention activities along with a programme for the detection and control of tuberculosis.

Maternal Protection Scheme

Maternal protection scheme allows an expecting mother to sign herself by paying a small fee and get entitled to prenatal services through SEWA. During and after childbirth, signed in members were given some money and one kilo ghee (clarified butter) for her nutritional requirements. SEWA also trains traditional midwives or dais working in rural areas in scientific maternal and childcare.

Parivartan, by Mahila Health Trust (MHT)

Most of the marginalized SEWA members resided in slums where living conditions are horrible. Mahila Housing Trust (MHT), in partnership with Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), SEWA Bank, Community-Based Organizations and some private sector organizations, commenced a slum upgradation programme called “PARIVARTAN” with a mission to improve the basic physical infrastructure within the slums and in the homes by providing water supply to individual households, underground sewerage connection to individual households, toilets to individual households, storm water drainage.

Vimo SEWA

This insurance scheme by SEWA offers an combined package of insurance coverage against any loss of productive assets due to calamites or communal violence, against accidents and illness. SEWA launched this programme at the SEWA Bank after realizing that almost all the workers were indebted to money lenders and most of their money deposited in the bank goes to clear health-related debt. SEWA Bank also noticed that the non-repayment of loans by its member was because of their untimely deaths, continuous illness, chronic disease problems, deaths during pregnancy and delivery etc. This factor led to the incorporation of the goal of insurance by the SEWA Bank to all its workers along with its other goals of asset creation and assuring credit and loans.

By improving income-earning capacity of the members, SEWA managed to improve their nutritional status and by arranging facilities for improved housing and sanitation it has tried to mollify health threats from the immediate living and work environment.

SEWA Shakti Kendra (SSK): Creating equal access to social security services

SSKs communicate the available resources that marginalized communities have access to, help them with the application process of government benefits, and ensure that the benefits and services are delivered to the applicants. SEWA has managed to successfully implement over 30, 000 public welfare schemes across India. SEWA’s most popular health initiatives is the sale of medicines at low cost in medical shops at major hospitals in Ahmedabad. In 2002, nearly 300, 000 people obtained primary health services of various kinds through SEWA teams of local barefoot doctors. Besides, to run a mobile clinic in rural areas affected by the 2001 earthquake, external funds were collected, which allowed doctors in government hospitals to extend the reach of their services.

Conclusion

The success behind the SEWA being largest union is its organizational capacity to expand membership across various regions is unique. SEWA has been active since last 48 years in organizing, mobilizing and empowering rural women across India with effective schemes and right execution. Flexibility and leadership are other factors which has helped it reach its current state.