Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) Cooperative Federation on Thursday celebrated its silver jubilee, marking 25 years of its establishment since 1992. More than 200 women cooperative leaders were part of the initiative from across the state. Over the past 25 years, the Federation has been instrumental in organizing women into collectives and in helping them get registered as primary-women's cooperatives. So far, some 106 cooperatives have been established by SEWA, with a total turnover of a whopping Rs 400 crore.

"More than 80% of these cooperatives are viable and self-financing and do not seek financial assistance from SEWA Federation. Of these, some 55 are functional in rural areas of Gujarat in the dairy sector, while the rest include artisan cooperatives, labour cooperatives and Sewa bank, among others," said Mirai Chatterjee, chairperson, SEWA Federation.

Going forward, the federation plans more initiatives for the making women self-sustainable. "All our cooperatives so far have been innovative and our idea is to further come up with newer avenues for women. We don't want to limit these cooperatives to enable women to do stereotypical jobs. With changing economy and society, we also aim to focus on sectors such as IT, nursing and drivers, security guards, among others," said Chatterjee.

We aim at further scaling up and supporting cooperatives to help them achieve greater financial sustainability through business development, he added.

Ela Bhatt, founder, SEWA, said, "These membership-based and owned organisations are key to converge the vision for 'Swaraj' based on 'roti, kapda, makaan' and three primary services -financial, health and education - provided locally and in a financially and environmentally sustainable manner - all led by women."