Sewa

A self employed women's association all over India..

1. SEWA Self Employed Women’s Association Introduction SEWA is a trade union registered in 1972. It is an organisation of poor, self-employed women workers. SEWA’s main goals are to organise women workers for full employment. (Full employment means employment whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security and social security ) Practically, the strategy is carried out through the joint action of union and cooperatives.

2. Gandhian thinking is the guiding force for SEWA’s poor, self-employed members in organising for social change. We follow the principles of satya (truth), ahinsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (integrating all faiths, all people) and khadi (propagation of local employment and self reliance). SEWA is both an organisation and a movement. The SEWA movement is enhanced by its being a sangam or confluence of three movements : the labour movement , the cooperative movement and the women’s movement. It is also a movement of self-employed workers : their own, home-grown movement with women as the leaders. Through their own movement women become strong and visible.

3. History of SEVA Self Employed Women's Assoication SEWA was born in 1972 as a trade union of self employed women. It grew out of the Textile Labour Association , TLA , India's oldest and largest union of textile workers founded in 1920 by a women, Anasuya Sarabhai . The inspiration for the union came from Mahatma Gandhi, who led a successful strike of textile workers in 1917.

4. Goals of SEWA It has two main goals : Full Employment  and  Self Reliance . The following eleven question have emerged from the members and continually serve as a guide for all members, group leaders, executive committee members and full-time organisers of SEWA. It is also useful for monitoring SEWA’s progress and the relevance of its various activities and their congruence with member’s reality and priorities.

5. The Eleven Questions of SEWA : Have more members obtained more employment ? Has their income increased ? Have they obtained food and nutrition ? Has their health been safeguarded ? Have they obtained child-care? Have they obtained or improved their housing ? Have their assets increased ? (e.g. their own savings, land, house, work-space, tools or work, licenses, identity cards, cattled and share in cooperatives; and all in their own name. Have the worker’s organisational strength increased ? Has worker’s leadership increased ? Have they become self-reliant both collectively and individually ? Have they become literate? Questions 1 to 7 are linked to the goal of full employment while 8 to 11 are those concerned with SEWA’s goal of self reliance. However each of these are interconnected to each other.

6. SEWA's Membership SEWA members are workers who have no fixed employee-employer relationship and depend on their own labour for survival. Hawkers, vendors and small business women like vegetable, fruit, fish, egg and other vendors Home-based workers like weavers, potters, bidi and agarbatti workers, papad rollers, ready-made garment workers Manual labourers & service providers like agricultural labourers , construction workers, contract labourers , handcart pullers Producers & Services who invest their labour and capital to carry out their businesses like cattle rearers , salt workers, gum collectors, cooking & vending etc.

7. 2008 SEWA Membership All - India Membership year – 2008 State Membership Gujarat 5,19,309 Murshidabad 1,758 Delhi 15,771 Madhya Pradesh - SEWA -Indore 3,82,000 Uttar Pradesh - Bareli - Lucknow 402 24,100 Kerala - Trivandrum 675 Dehradhun 954 All India Membership 9,66,139 Gujarat Membership 5,19,309

8. Sewa Services SEWA Bank Health Care Child Care Vimo SEWA Legal Services Capacity building of SEWA members Housing and Infrastucture Video SEWA

9. T H A N K Y O U