SEWA celebrates 4 Decades of sewa
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- Current News
- Friday, 13 April 2012 06:53
- Published on Friday, 13 April 2012 16:53
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Gujarat Global News Network, Ahmedabad
SEWA celebrated 40 successful years of organizing women workers at a function held yesterday in Ahmedabad. The function presided over by SEWA’s Founder, Elaben Bhatt had women’s studies scholar, Dr. Ushaben Thakkar and Dr. Lataben Desai co-founder of the community health NGO, Seva Rural, as special guests.Â
The celebration of song, dance and plays by SEWA members and  their family members was organized to commemorate 40 years of organising 13.5 lakh women into unions, cooperatives and self-help groups. It was a joint effort of SEWA’s capacity – building institution, SEWA Academy, (trained more than 3,06,482 members) the 5,00,000 depositors-strong SEWA Bank, the SEWA Cooperative Federation of 105 primary women’s cooperatives, Mahila Housing SEWA Trust bringing affordable housing and basic amenities (a tap and toilet in every home) in urban and rural areas, and SEWA Social Security, providing health care, child care and insurance to more than 2,50,000 women and their families through Lok Swasthya Sewa, Sangini and VimoSEWA cooperatives.
The theme of the celebration was SEWA’s integrated approach to self-reliance – through capitalization (financial services and asset-building in women’s name), social security (health care, child care, insurance, pension and housing), capacity-building and voice and representation. The songs and play showed how action on all these four is needed simultaneously to help women emerge out of poverty and move towards self-reliance.Â
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