India Exchange and Dialogue Program

In January 2023, the ENGAGE partners gathered at Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India to celebrate their 50 years of organizing and working with informal sector women in India. Now with over 2.5 million members, SEWA is deeply rooted in Ghandhian principles of organizing to ensure full employment and self-reliance of women workers. As part of the program, the ENGAGE team visited the social enterprises and cooperatives that SEWA members have organized. We were able to learn about and from their operations, history, and future directions.

The Exchange and Dialogue Program with SEWA included deep conversations with members and visits to the SEWA Bank, weaving cooperatives, child care centres, SEWA Management School, and Salt Pan workers. The rich dialogue left participants inspired and with plans for how to integrate what they learned into their own work, organizations, and communities.

One of the most interesting sessions was on how SEWA has fully embraced the future of work and information and communication technology. Their members and village savings and loans groups are now onboarded onto digital apps that allow them to track and renew members, monitor and maintain records of savings and loans, and to place and send product orders. Their latest app is the SEWA App, which will integrate online training, current apps, a member directory, surveys, an internal marketplace, and help members track their own progress.

SEWA shared that the successful uptake of their apps, especially when working with informal women who are not familiar with technology, is because of a careful design process with feedback and user design with members themselves. For example, the apps are always in their own language, have easy colour codification, many pictures, reduce or eliminate manual entry, and allow for voice input. The members themselves are onboarded and trained by their peers so the learning process is comfortable and they can build trust with their SEWA sisters.