May 2010

What's New

MBO WORKSHOP IN AHMEDABAD: SEWA SHOWS THE WAY FORWARD

Twenty one representatives of country homenets from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines and Thailand gathered at the SEWA Academy Learning Hub  in Ahmedabad to participate in a five-day training  on Membership-Based Organizations of the Poor (MBOP)  29 March to 2 April.

The objective of the training was to educate the participants, half of whom were homebased worker leaders, on the concept, characteristics and key features of MBOP in the context and experience of  the SEWA in organizing women workers in the informal economy.

The training included exposure visits to offices,  projects, and field sites  of SEWA Academy, SEWA Bank, SEWA Union, and SEWA Cooperative Federation.  It also used lectures and power point presentations, interactive discussions, games, and field visits.

After the chanting of common prayers applying to Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and other faiths, the SEWA Academy Learning Hub team welcomed the participants and introduced the activities of the various divisions: training, literacy, research, and communication. A very special unit of Academy is the award-winning Video SEWA, a unique cooperative which has empowered even illiterate women to handle sophisticated equipment.   All the activities  of the Academy are geared towards distilling the knowledge and wisdom of grassroots women, and serving their needs and demands. 

Challenges and Benefits of Organizing

With the creative use of a thread and bead came, participants divided into country groups were able to come up with a list of challenges and benefits of organizing.  The challenges include cultural barriers, divisions among workers, pressures from the outside (e.g., the dominant caste or class), victimization  and termination of employment, tactics such as singling out those who are weak,  harassment and violence, use of dominant and legal bodies to discourage workers, negative self-image especially of women, resistance from the husband and other family members, and uncooperative attitudes.

On the positive side, organizing can address vulnerability and insecurity of workers, can build their hope, self-esteem and self-identity, can overcome their fear, can in crease their bargaining power, can enable them to pool resources, access services, share experiences, help each other in times of need, and when they have the numbers, even to change lws and policies.

SEWA Banyan Tree

Namrata Bali, Director of SEWA Academy, likened  the SEWA family of organizations to a banyan tree with many branches and roots, each root with the potential of becoming an independent tree.   She explained that SEWA is a confluence of the labor, women’s and cooperative movements, organizing women in the informal economy   through the strategy of struggle and development towards its two main goals: full employment and self-reliance.

She explained that SEWA uses an integrated and need-based approach to organizing, combining capacity building, capital formation and social security all together, not one after the other.

Namrata described three main membership-based organizations within the SEWA family. The SEWA Union is the largest union of women informal workers in the world, numbering about 1.2 million  from 125 different kinds of trades and covering nine states in India. Members elect their representatives  in the 3,000-strong  Trade Council every three years, each representative representing 200 worker members.  The Executive Committee consists of 25 members, 21 from the working class.

SEWA also went into organizing cooperatives to fulfill the socio-economic and cultural needs of its members, particularly those with no fixed employer-employee relations.  Members who are shareholders own their cooperatives,  and elect their President and Management Committee. Cooperatives need to register and are  run with their own set rules and regulations.  SEWA now has 102 functioning cooperatives; members of these cooperatives are members of the SEWA Union but not the other way around.

SEWA organizes community-based organizations (CBOs) mainly to address housing issues.  There is usually one CBO per 200 households. Members elect their Executive Committee .

Exposure Activities

The participants had face to face interaction with homebased workers engaged in bidi , agarbatti,  bead and kite-making and who joined the SEWA Union in the course of their struggles for better wages and working conditions.  They also had a chance to talk with employers and with the government-run Welfare Board which provides identity cards, free training, tool kits, and health insurance to registered informal workers.  They visited the SEWA Bank and learned how it was founded as a special kind of cooperative catering to the  need for safely kept savings, affordable  loans,  insurance, assets, and home improvement  of grassroots women, many of them illiterate.  They interacted with women running and benefiting fron  child care, health care, and insurance cooperatives, all of which provide various forms of social security and protection to its members.  They visited the  state-level SEWA Cooperatives Federation, which has under its wings service, artisan, land-based,  credit,  training, and  milk cooperatives with almost 80,000 members. And they also had a chance to shop at Kalakruti, a shop featuring products of SEWA members.

What finally, is an MBOP?

As summarized by Namrata Bali in the concluding session, a membership-based organization of the poor (MBOP) in the context of SEWA is run, managed, and owned by the  workers.  An MBOP is distinct from an MBO in that the former are  “controlled by and accountable to, and seek to fulfill the objectives of poor members.”

An MBOP runs on the following principles:democracy, transparency, solidarity, collective benefit , independence, control  by the members, voluntary membership,
collectively agreed objectives and decision-making structures , and financial or kind contribution

The  objectives of an MBOP, as explained by Namrata, are also quite specific. These  include increasing the voice and visibility of the members, and representing  the members’ interest to authorities .  An MBOP also  promotes solidarity among members and the working poor,   and  strengthens their  organizing spirit. It is there primarily to improve the economic and social security of members. It  works for members’ self-identity, and capacity building of both leaders and members. , It seeks the holistic development of its members, recognizing that human beings  have different needs.  

An MBOP also has distinguishing features. It has a defined criteria for membership, ensuring that it is drawn, in the case of SEWA, from poor women working in the informal economy.  An MBOP has a transparent and democratic management and governance mechanism.  It is impelled by democratically agreed aims and objectives, and implements democratically agreed programs and activities. Its leadership is elected and is responsible for and accountable to the membership; decision-making powers rest with the mbmers in a bottom up and top down process.  It strives towards financial self-sufficiency, relying on members’ contributions. It focuses on the needs of members, who participate in implementing activities and benefit from them. It is independent of government, employers, religious and political authorities. And it is built on the unity and solidarity of members who consider their organization as family. \\