About Us

SEWA Gram Mahila Haat (SGMH) was set up in early 1999 as an apex organization to provide marketing facilities and other market related support to the rural producer groups towards their empowerment and economic self-reliance. The Commissionerate of Rural Development, Government of Gujarat supported the initiative by allocating the requisite funds. The scattered rural producer groups have been motivated to form district level associations.

The objectives of SGMH are to enable the rural producers to earn a regular minimum income of Rs.2000 per month, by providing technical support in terms of skill up-gradation and exploring new marketing opportunities. It also aims at providing working capital assistance to the district associations and facilitates the producers to beome owners and managers of their collective enterprises.

Expanding the horizons, SGMH provides technical inputs to improve the marketibility of the products, apart from imparting training inputs in skills, to tackle the widespread problem of low and substandard quality of the products in the informal sector. It is to be a leading local, national and international fair trade organisation.

economic self reliance through regular employment for poor and self employed rural women

Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) was registered in 1972 as a modest trade union and has emerged as one of the most powerful and successful women's movement ever. It is a not-for-profit organisation of the poor, self-employed women workers in the informal sector, in both rural and urban areas SEWA's main constituency lies in the rural areas with more than a 100 thousand members. SEWA works primarily in drought prone districts in Gujarat, characterized by lack of employment opportunities, very low wages, low literacy, crippling debts and high rates of forced migration. SEWA's efforts have been successful in reducing the migration of families by giving an impetus to the traditional skills of handwor to provide regular sustainable income supported with Banking, Health and Child Care Services to its members.

The prime objectives have been to organize women workers for full employment - social security and self-reliance - individually and collectively , in terms of their decision making capacity and economic issues. With member strength of over 200 thousand, almost half of which are in the rural segment, SEWA has strong foothold in 9 districts of Gujarat and 5 other states of India. inspired by the SEWA movement, similar women's organisations are being formed in South Africa, Yemen, Nepal, Turkey and other countries.

Banascraft and Kutchcraft were set up in 1989 and 1995 respectively, with the sole purpose of providing marketing opportunities to the rural producer groups. For most of them, the income from their craft related work is their only source of livelihood. The strength of these marketing efforts lie in the fact that the grass root level craftsperson is gradually becoming the manager-owner of her enterprise through local groups which are federated into district level cooperatives. Financially each one of them is gaining more through their collective bargaining strength and better quality products