ICA-AP along with the Gujarat Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Cooperative Federation and SEWA Bharat with the support of the ICA-EU Partnership organized the National Workshop for Women’s Cooperatives, in Ahmedabad, India. The workshop was organized on August 8 and 9, at the Navajivan Trust, a publication house established by Mahatma Gandhi! The workshop stemmed from the need to empower women’s cooperatives in the Indian context and had a four-pronged focus: accessing finance, leveraging technologies to boost business, networking and marketing linkages for goods and services, and supporting an enabling environment with policies, laws and regulations.
The opening ceremony was graced by the presence of Ms. Ela Bhatt, a cooperative luminary, and the founder of SEWA. Ms. Bhatt shared that since SEWA’s beginning in 1972, it has set-up hundreds of women’s cooperatives which provide a voice to women and ensure their contribution to the economy is recognised. She said that involving women and building cooperatives connected to their work and skills, are crucial steps in mitigating problems of hunger, starvation, violence and climate change. Mr. Sundeep Kumar Nayak, Managing Director, NCDC, shared about the YUVA SAHAKAR program, within which they have a special provision for cooperatives with 100% women members. The cooperatives need to be in existence for a minimum of three months and they are eligible for loans with a debt-equity ratio of 80%-20%. Mr. Balasubramanian Iyer, Regional Director, ICA-AP, said that the workshop resonates with ICA-AP’s focus on the participation of women and youth in cooperatives. This is also an opportunity for ICA-AP to push for more women in leadership roles in cooperatives. Dr. Simel Esim, Head, Cooperatives Unit, ILO shared that ILO has been working with SEWA since its inception in 1972. Recently, ILO COOP co-authored a Report with SEWA Cooperative Federation on challenges and opportunities around cooperatives supported by SEWA. She spoke of cooperatives being formed by young graduates and freelance professionals to ensure they have proper contracts, get support for legal dispute settlements, file their taxes and access social security.
Opening Panel: (L-R) Mr. Ghanshyam Amin (NCUI), Mr. Sundeep Kumar Nayak (NCDC), Ms. Ela Bhatt (SEWA),
Dr. Simel Esim (ILO) and Mr. Balasubramanian Iyer (ICA-AP).
The main takeaways from the session on Access to Finance included: fulfilling the need for providing financial literacy to women, having a sustainability plan in place before applying for loans, reducing reliance on external financing as this might hit cash flows in the future etc. The session on Digital Technologies for Cooperatives, highlighted how technology breaks information asymmetry and informs women on relevant themes. Women’s cooperatives need to align with local and global value chains to reach out to maximum consumers. The session also threw up a question on whether women’s cooperatives have the requisite human and financial resources to access digital platforms or create them to sell their products? The session on Building Market Linkages was designed as a focus group discussion with the participants divided into groups based on their sectors - agriculture, handicrafts, credit and services. The expert speakers were distributed across these groups and provided their insight and answered queries on how women’s cooperatives can effectively leverage market linkages and enhance publicity of their products. The concluding session looked at Governance Mechanisms for Cooperatives and the discussions focussed on the existing environment for growth of women’s cooperatives in India. The session saw sharing of policy bottlenecks/regulatory hurdles faced by women’s cooperatives.
