Pertinent Perils

SEWA Pride

The greatest inspiration I drew from my meetings with women entrepreneurs in India occurred during the “visioning” exercise. As new members join SEWA, they participate in facilitated training sessions to identify their means of self-employment (such as needlework, growing vegetables in small plots of land, paid childcare in their homes for other workers and other home-based businesses). The training sessions help them to build the skills required for the success of their businesses, such as budgeting, a challenge for many members who are illiterate. (The ATM’s of SEWA bank have graphic icons for illiterate users and are hugely popular with members, who are some of the most enthusiastic adopters of technology I have ever met.)

At the last of the training sessions, the group participates in a “visioning” exercise. Each member shares her vision for a better future. For women mired in extreme poverty, envisioning a better future is a challenge. Their lives are spent on tasks for basic survival. But with the encouragement of the other members of the group, each woman, often in a very shy, reluctant manner at first, begins to articulate her dream for the future: perhaps a new roof for her shanty, or a new well for fresh water or other amenities that her increased income can provide her household.

Almost as Beautiful as SEWA

And the dream always includes an education for her children, as her first priority is to pay the school fees to invest in a better future for the next generation. By the time the session is over, everyone is in tears as we each imagine what a better future would look like for the families of women entrepreneurs. I am sure that in these difficult economic times, that is what sustains each of us.

SEWA Styles for the Next Season

The second of SEWA’s two for-profit businesses develops clothing for women and children, using traditional Indian designs. SEWA is fully vertically integrated, with SEWA businesses doing everything from designing the clothing to weaving the fabric to sewing the garments.

SEWA is achieving change on a significant scale. In just the western Gujarat State, SEWA has 500,000 members. More than 100,000 women are policyholders in SEWA’s health and life insurance plans. SEWA bank has 350,000 depositors and, like most microfinance organizations, a very high repayment rate of 97 percent on loans ranging from $100 to $1,100, on which members pay an average interest rate of 15 percent. SEWA’s loan portfolio is entirely funded by the deposit savings of its members.

SEWA Kiosk

Many SEWA members also grow vegetables on their small plots of land which they sell, either to agribusinesses for processing or directly to consumers, such as from this SEWA kiosk. At the annual meeting of the SEWA cooperative members, which I had the privilege of attending, SEWA’s iconic founder, Ela Bhatt, outlined her vision for the future of SEWA members. At age 76, Ela continues to innovate to ensure that the poor women who are SEWA members capture a fair share of India’s expanding economy. She urged SEWA members to consider capturing the value of SEWA-branded agricultural products rather than selling nameless commodities for which other processors would capture higher rents.

Annual Meeting of SEWA Members

SEWA Shop in New Delhi

The strategy for branding SEWA is impressive for its sophistication and its mission of improving the lives of SEWA members. This was the second of the lessons I took away from my exchange with women entrepreneurs in India: our common need to capture the value we create in fair pricing. We work too hard to see these margins captured by other players in the supply chain.

Luncheon Speakers at the Indian Consulate in New York

A recent article in the New York Times reminds me to share three of the lessons I learned during exchanges with women entrepreneurs from India. The second annual International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC) was held last June here in New York. The competition celebrates outstanding female-led small businesses that are expanding on a global basis. Mine was one of the three women-owned small businesses selected to represent the U.S. in the IWEC program. Three women-owned small businesses were selected from each of the other participating regions: Spain (Barcelona), India and Africa. We had three very full days together, including a case study taught by IESE Business School (Barcelona) Professor Paddy Miller and a luncheon at the Indian Consulate in New York. The photograph shows the panel of our luncheon speakers, including Ambassador Ruth Davis of the U.S. State Department. Our hostess, Ambassador Neelam Dao, Consul General of India in New York, was an excellent speaker and unusually candid for a diplomat. She remarked about the embarrassment of Wall Street titans having to go to sovereign wealth funds of “third world countries” (remember this was in June of 2008, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers) for bailouts after they had enriched themselves while mismanaging their institutions. She added that in finance it is usually “last in, first out” and worried about the fate of smaller women-owned enterprises and microfinance clients who would, she correctly predicted, be unable to access financing to continue to grow their businesses, notwithstanding the fact that their businesses, our businesses, are sustainable and provide broad benefits to the world economy. I could not have agreed with her more and was delighted with her frankness.

Gandhi's Ashram in Ahmadabad, India

I was even more delighted to read the report in the New York Times of the operations of SEWA, the Self-Employed Women’s Association. I had the occasion to visit SEWA in Ahmadabad, India, when I served as the Senior Policy Advisor to a program of the United Nations Capital Development Fund. SEWA is a network of more than 100 Gandhian-style, women-owned and led cooperatives, which do everything from offer childcare to sell produce to Indian agribusinesses for processing. (Gandhi’s ashram is also located in Ahmadabad.) Like more than 90% of Indians, SEWA members are employed in the informal economy, where most earn less than twenty cents a day and have no social safety net. They are vulnerable to what economists call “external shocks”, an antiseptic term for life’s calamities, such as illness or unemployment, for which they have no protection.

Printing a Pattern to Embroider

SEWA’s microfinance institution extends to credit to allow women in the slums to build small businesses, such as hair salons. It also offers retirement accounts and health insurance to the SEWA members to give them some protection against the unexpected, job training to enter non-traditional fields (such as women gas station attendants) and distribution of the handcrafted products of SEWA members to major retailers.

Pride in SEWA is shown in the flower petals arranged in the form of the SEWA logo and colors to welcome visitors. SEWA’s Trade Facilitation Centre supports two for-profit businesses that develop and sell traditional needlework products, an art passed from mother to daughter in the state of Guarat in India. SEWA develops designs that their marketing research show appeal to consumer tastes and then distribute these design imprints with individually packaged needle kits, containing all necessary supplies, to participating SEWA members. The members do the needlework in their homes, while tending to their small plots of land, caring for their children or elderly parents or raising a few small animals for feed.

Cleaning and Drying

The finished products are brought to the SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre for processing, where they are spun dry, to remove any dust or particles they may have acquired, and properly cleaned. They are then sent to SEWA retail shops in New Delhi and Ahmadabad for sale to consumers. SEWA hopes to have an e-commerce site available in the near future.