05/07/2018
THE BIRTH
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was started in 1972 as the association of Textile Labour Association (TLA), which was established by Gandhi in 1918. The formation of SEWA was triggered by the realization of no existence of unions protecting the individuals outside formal sector, especially women. The informal economy workers worked as street vendors, head loaders, home-based workers, service providers, agriculture producers, hand-cart pullers and so on. With a total membership of about 1.93 million in 2015, SEWA was recognized as a large informal economy women workers' organization. SEWA's movement seeks to organize the informal sector for women workers and give their work visibility through which it strives to achieve its goal of full employment and self-reliance for women.
SEWA launched the ‘Hariyali’ (Green Livelihood) campaign with the goal of energy access, financial inclusion and gender empowerment for SEWA’s poor women members. Hariyali was implemented through a special purpose vehicle called the Grassroot Trading Network for Women (GTNfW) whose aim is to provide a clean and green livelihood to its members while fulfilling SEWA’s ultimate goal of ‘full employment and self-reliance’ for women. With this in mind, GTNfW has been working to substantially reduce the expenditure of poor women members across its geographies by providing clean energy solutions to reduce
a) The expenditure on conventional sources of energy such as diesel, and
b) Save them the time spent in gathering energy sources like firewood and others which could be utilized for other productive and more efficient activities.
Thus converging towards SEWA’s twin goals.
