| Women affecting change
August 19, 2009
VANCOUVER – “There cannot be any excuse for not removing poverty. The priorities have to change. The resource allocations have to change. Policies have to change.” With this conviction, Ela Bhatt, the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), has set out to empower women in India by supporting them in their efforts to become financially independent and autonomous through their own labour.  Ela Bhatt is one of the speakers appearing at the Women and Peace-building dialogue on Tuesday, September 29, at the Orpheum Theatre. She will be joined by The Dalai Lama, Fazle Hasan Abed, Kim Campbell, Jody Williams, Maria Shriver, Ashley Judd, Swanee Hunt and Susan Davis.
The former Indian parliamentarian has been guided by Mahatma Gandhi's stance that only local employment and self-reliance will lift people out of poverty. As a determined entrepreneur who believes in the force of a grassroots movement, she has built SEWA, India’s largest single trade union, to a membership of 1,000,000. The women labourers are vegetable and garment vendors, in-home seamstresses, head-loaders, bidi rollers, paper pickers, construction workers, incense stick makers, and agricultural workers.
“Self-reliance is self-sufficiency financially … You decide and you manage in making decisions, in managing your own affairs. That is, in very specific terms, what we mean by self-reliance.”
SEWA’s goal is full employment, which means employment whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security and social security (at least health care, child care and shelter). “Let us guarantee a living income, provide social protection, ensure decent work and most important, build communities,” Bhatt has declared.
In order to help achieve these goals, Bhatt established the Cooperative Bank of SEWA, founded in 1974 by 4,000 women each contributing ten rupees. Called a “gentle revolutionary,” Bhatt is also the founder and chair of Sa-Dhan (the All India Association of Micro Finance Institutions) and founder-chair of the Indian School of Micro-finance for Women.
“Through their own movement women become strong and visible. Their tremendous economic and social contributions become recognized.” The result, as Bhatt has shown us, is the alleviation of chronic deprivation, poverty, injustice and the realization of social change.
Fazle Hasan Abed is another luminary who shares Bhatt’s viewpoint that poverty must be tackled through the organization of the isolated poor and by finding practical ways to increase their access to resources, support their entrepreneurship, and empower them to become active agents of change. Abed is the founder and chair of BRAC, formerly known as the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, one of the largest non-government development organizations in the world.
“No human being should be in dehumanizing poverty for any time. And we would like to break the cycle of poverty into a cycle of human existence,” Abed has vowed.
Under Abed’s leadership, BRAC has taken an holistic approach towards combating social, economic and political inequalities by introducing innovative initiatives in health care, education, income generation, population control and microfinance. BRAC is currently active in 70,000 villages of Bangladesh connecting with an estimated 100 million poor and the organization is also on the ground working in Afghanistan, Africa and Sri Lanka.
Women and girls have been the central analytical lens of BRAC's anti-poverty strategies. The organization has introduced programs and initiatives that have enabled 3.8 million women, the backbone of BRAC's organization, to establish village microfinance organizations that have disbursed more than $1 billion in loans. These loans have allowed women to create small businesses, poultry farming, cow rearing, and dairy farming, and in the production of iodized salt, which helps prevent goiter.
Abed, formerly a Corporate Executive at Shell Oil, strongly believes that poverty cannot be eradicated without the reconstruction of gender role in the society. Empowerment of women is a precondition for sustainable poverty alleviation. He has been tireless at promoting a development culture with women at the forefront of all activities, be it micro-credit, health, or education.
Bhatt on Women and Social Change
"In my experience, I have seen that it is the women who have brought the change. For example, we have been working in the desert area for the last few years, and it is the women who have been able to change the local ecology, regenerate the local ecology. It is the local women who have stopped up to 80% of the forced migration. Women have that capacity for social change by coming together and working on a peaceful basis. I have a great faith in that and I have seen in practice that it is possible.
I think that is fundamental -- social change. That women sit together, praying together, of all faiths, every day. In crisis, helping each other in concrete terms. Facing the power brokers face to face -- it may be police, or contractors, or a minister, or the prime minister -- trying to bring change in their favor at the policy level. All this is fundamental towards change. And I think that is the right path." [From an August 31, 2003 interview conducted by Nic Paget-Clarke for In Motion Magazine in Ahmedabad]
Abed on Women and Social Change
"We find that women tend to be the best change agents in any community,” Abed explains. “It’s not that men can’t do business. But you get the real needs from women.
"Men might say, ‘Oh, we need electricity — we want to watch TV.’ For women, it’s water, food for children, health centers.” Plus, Abed says, women are more willing to share the money with their families. Often, they’ll use the first loan to bring home the children who have been sent away for work. “By making your clients women, you serve the entire family [and community] better.” [From an interview featuring Clinton Global Citizen Award winners, by Tatyana Mishel, published online]
The Vancouver Peace Summit is a four-day event, held September 26-29, 2009. Speakers from across the globe will gather to discuss education and compassion as a means of achieving peace. It is presented in collaboration with the Fetzer Institute www.fetzer.org Media Sponsors:  For more information, visit our web site at http://www.dalailamacenter.org |
