iii. background and concept of edp
TRANSCRIPT
SEWA IFAD 2004
Exposure and Dialogue Programmes: A Grassroots Immersion Tool for
Understanding Poverty and Influencing Policy
Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA)
First Edition
Year : 2006
Copies : 500
Price : Rs. 150/-
Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA)Opp. Victoria Garden, Bhadra, Ahmedabad 380 001
Tel : +91-79-25506444/ 25506441/ 25506477/ 25507365Fax : +91-79-25506446Web : www. sewa.org
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Copyright Indian Academy for Self Employed Womenc
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IFAD SEWA : Exposure and Dialogue Programme
I. Introduction .................................................................................................1
II. SEWA Self-Employed Women's Association .............................................1
III. Background and Concept of EDP ...............................................................2
IV. SEWA Academy and EDPs........................................................................3
V. Goals of EDP: Bearing Witness and Inspiring Change...............................5
VI. Participants' Reflection and Dialogue: Relating theExperience to their Work...........................................................................12
VII. Reflections of the Facilitators: How EDP Can HelpGrassroots-level Fieldworkers Fieldworkers .............................................13
VIII. EDP from the Perspective of the Host: .....................................................14
IX. Conclusion ................................................................................................15
X. Host Profile: Savitaben Babubhai Parmar.................................................17
IFAD SEWA Exposure and Dialogue Programme
Over its lifetime, SEWA has maintained relationships with several multilateral
organizations especially the United Nations. SEWA's partnership with UN organizations
such as the UNDP and UNIFEM has been steadily growing. However, the partnership with
International Fund for Agricultural Development was new.
After the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, SEWA entered into partnership with the International
Fund for Agriculture Development to support long-term economic rehabilitation for many of
Gujarat's affected households. The innovative feature of this partnership - was true
partnership between IFAD, the national and state governments, and SEWA, a member
based organization.
Other significant aspects of this partnership were a consensus on decentralizing planning
and implementation to allow the village to plan and implement - thereby building village
institutions. This subsidiarity helped the initiative target the poorest of the poor.
SEWA felt that to strengthen the spirit of the partnership between IFAD and SEWA, its
members and the poorest households, an Exposure and Dialogue Programme would be a
powerful tool. The Exposure and Dialogue Programme would facilitate understanding the
two organizations their culture. More importantly, the Programme would help decision-
makers in multilateral agencies understand the lives and work of the poor.
The Vice President of IFAD, Mr. Phrang Roy, encouraged SEWA to present the concept
and methodology of their Exposure and Dialogue Programmes to the Board of IFAD. On
15th and 16th September 2004, Dr. Karl Osner and I presented the concept of EDP to the
Board. IFAD accepted and supported the concept; subsequently, the first EDP for IFAD
Board members and senior management was organized in November 2004. A team of 13
people participated in the Exposure and Dialogue Programme.
The Exposure and Dialogue Programme participants presented the benefits of the
IFAD - SEWA at the Fund's Governing Council meeting in February 2005. Through this, the
voices, the many struggles, and the real life of the SEWA-member hostesses - the poorest
households - were brought to the Governing Council of the IFAD.
SEWA was invited to the Governing Council of IFAD in February 2006 as a next step.
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One Exposure and Dialogue Programme, however, is not enough to sensitize a multilateral
organization such as IFAD but it definitely it makes a small beginning. We hope in the
coming years that EDPs becomes increasingly effective tools for institutional partnership
building.
I also believe that EDPs can initiate processes of local-to-global policy connections. Here,
macro-policymakers have been given an opportunity to experience poverty and the lives of
the poor first hand. This may remind them, when drafting and debating policies, to consider
how their actions will affect those they have met.
Reema NanawatyJune 2006
I. Introduction
The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) has had over a decade of experience hosting
exposure and dialogue programmes (EDPs) for staff from development agencies, government
officials and academics. SEWA was ready to host an EDP for IFAD, on request from IFAD. Through
the lens of an EDP hosted in December 2004 by SEWA for staff and Executive Board members of
the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), this paper explores generally the concept
of EDP, its goals and utility. It goes on to evaluate the EDP experience from the perspective of
participant, facilitator and host before drawing some recommendations on how EDPs could be used
by development agencies as a tool for understanding poverty and improving policy. The EDP
provides a brief, but intense, immersion living with a host family in a poor community for two to three
days witnessing in a tangible and personal manner the ground realities of poverty. SEWA promotes
EDPs as a tool for development professionals to learn from the true “poverty experts” - the poor
themselves about what it means to be poor; what is the daily reality they face in poverty; how they
confront this reality; and how they struggle to come out of poverty. It is also a process for SEWA's
own organizers to better understand the situation they are working to change; to introspect on their
work; and to assess the impact and progress of their work from a ground-level, personal
perspective. For the host, EDP offers an opportunity to share their experiences and life story and, in
however small a way, exercise voice.
II. SEWA Self-Employed Women's Association
Founded in 1972 as a registered labour union by women cart pullers and head loaders, SEWA is a
member-based organisation, or movement, of poor, self-employed women workers. Initially SEWA
organized urban, self-employed women working as street vendors, garment stitchers, paper pickers,
etc. The movement grew organically to include more trades and expand its focus to rural self-
employed women. Today SEWA's 718,000 members span across India with nearly 370,000
members in rural Gujarat. SEWA is active in five other Indian states in addition to Gujarat and
maintains an international presence through sister-organisations in South Africa, Turkey and Yemen.
Three movements - the labour movement, the cooperative movement and the women's movement -
converge in SEWA. It is an indigenous movement of self-employed women that builds the capacity
of illiterate and semi-literate workers to manage their own economic development. Many of SEWA's
staff are recruited and promoted from among its member base. SEWA espouses a holistic approach
to development to achieve two fundamental goals for its members: self-reliance and full
employment. To achieve these goals SEWA believes multiple interventions are necessary to lift
women out of poverty through increased productivity and to reduce their vulnerabilities to sudden
crises. SEWA's approach uses four principle tools for poverty alleviation: organizing for collective
strength; access to financial services for capital accumulation; capacity building; and social security
through health care, child-care, insurance and housing programmes. SEWA's ultimate goal is for
each member to gain employment that ensures work security, income security, food security and
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fighting poverty are shared with aid agency staff. SEWA has conducted 26 EDPs to date hosting
representatives from GTZ, BMZ, the World Bank, DFID and others. EDP is also used by SEWA for
in-house capacity building and leadership training.
The EDP is divided into three phases - exposure, reflection and dialogue. The process starts, as in
the case of the IFAD EDP, with an intensive pre-EDP preparatory stage and concludes with an in-
depth follow-up focusing on the consequences of the learnings from the EDP on the daily work of
participants. During the first phase of the EDP, the exposure, participants live for two to three days
with their host, a poor woman who is striving to overcome poverty. The participants are immersed in
the life experience of their hosts and for a short period they take part in their daily lives and work.
The EDP offers participants a window to the worries, needs, achievements, hopes and fears of the
poor and an opportunity to learn from their life stories. This glimpse, however brief, provides
participants with a more personal understanding of the complexities of vulnerability and poverty.
Following the stay with their host, participants spend another two days for reflection and dialogue.
Participants will often begin with personal reflection and take time to think about and process their
experience before talking the other participants in an effort to understand their experience in the
context of their work and identify key themes or words. The dialogue brings together participant, host
and facilitator once again to discuss the broad implications of their experience and suggest action.
The underlying belief is that the cycle of direct experience followed by reflection, questioning and
exchange of ideas will enable participants to evaluate their experience with respect to their policies
or development strategies which in turn will lead to change and action.
The EDP essentially aims to personalize the abstract, impersonal relationship between “donor” and
“beneficiary” bringing the two face-to-face and building a bridge between them. This process enables
the “donor” to look at their own work and decisions from the perspective of their host and
strengthens their commitment to poverty reduction, as it becomes a personal concern. The process
brings donor agency staff into direct contact with their client, which can both increase motivation and
also frame policy decisions with direct lived experience of the reality of poverty and the voice and
views of the poor. IV. SEWA Academy and EDPs
SEWA Academy has been organizing many exposure programmes for SEWA's national and
international guests mainly senior policy-makers and academics. One of these is the Exposure
Dialogue Programme (EDP). Through this programme 28 teams so far have personally experienced
the different challenges of organizing poor women and working for their development. In the year
2004, IFAD decided that their senior officials would be a part of SEWA Academy's EDP. This was a
unique opportunity for the SEWA Academy. The Academy's role in the EDP involved management,
coordination and documentation.
The process began with the selection of the aagewans (local leaders) who were to host the
social security.
As a member-based organization, SEWA follows a demand driven approach to development where
the poor directly participate in the planning and decision making process. Its rural interventions cover
a broad range of activities such as microfinance, micro-insurance, watershed management, dairy
cooperatives, salt production, gum production, handicrafts, health care, functional literacy,
agricultural development, etc. Members implement these activities through a variety of rural
institutions such as workers' and producers' cooperatives, self help groups, village committees and
handicraft associations. SEWA is organized as a network of inter-linked organizations: SEWA Bank;
Mahila SEWA Trust for social services; SEWA Academy for training and research; Mahila SEWA
Housing Trust; SEWA Gram Haat and SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre for marketing agricultural
products and handicrafts respectively; and registered district associations in nine districts. Each of
these organizations and activities evolved in response to the needs and demands of members linked
to securing sustainable livelihood and employment. SEWA's members created their own cooperative
bank when the formal banking sector could not service their need for a secure savings product or
access to working capital. SEWA designed a package of micro-insurance to members when it
realized that illness was a major reason for default or regressing back into poverty. SEWA began
establishing child care centres so that mothers could work a full day without worrying about their
child's well being. This movement, as SEWA's members call it, bridges the formal and informal
sectors, the modern and traditional worlds through a slow process of grassroots innovation and
experimentation. It is a process that places poor women at its core and offers a people-centric and
decentralized approach to tackling poverty.
III. Background and Concept of EDP
The Exposure and Dialogue Programme (EDP) was founded and developed by Dr. Karl Osner and
its legal holder, the German Association for the Promotion of North-South Dialogue (now Exposure
and Dialogue Programmes Association). The EDP programme aims to expose policy makers, staff of
bilateral and multilateral aid agencies, diplomats and government officials to the ground reality of
poverty. The EDP experience is about seeing poverty and vulnerability through the eyes of an
individual thereby giving poverty a face and a name. SEWA actively participated in the preparations
of IFAD participants by joining the preparatory meetings of IFAD. Dr Karl Osner was also involved in
the preparatory process.
The German Association for the Promotion of North-South Dialogue was founded in 1985 and has
carried out EDPs across the world for senior staff from German and international aid agencies.
SEWA hosted its first EDP in 1991 for participants from BMZ (German Federal Ministry for Overseas
Cooperation), GTZ (German Agency for Technical Cooperation) and KFW. For SEWA, EDPs have
served as a conduit for sharing the experience and learning of their members directly with decision
makers in donor agencies so that their voices are heard. It is a process of sensitization and
immersion through which the daily realities and challenges that SEWA and its members face in
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The EDP provides a face-to-face encounter with poverty, humanizing and personalizing poverty in
the eyes of development professionals to affect change and action. The most fundamental goal of
the EDP is bearing witness. The EDP is about witnessing and learning about how the poor struggle
to cope with poverty and strive to get out of it. More than one billion people across the world live in
extreme poverty, surviving on less than one dollar a day; Official Development Assistance to
developing countries last year reached US$ 78.6 billion (OECD). However, all too often, the people
who make the decisions about how the billions should be spent to overcome poverty have limited
direct contact with the people for whom they are ultimately working, the poor themselves. The poor
themselves have limited voice and influence over how the billions that are spent in their name will be
used. Greater participation and community-driven development is being increasingly promoted by
development agencies; however participation remains defined largely around donor terms through
appraisals, needs assessments, specific projects and other structured exercises. Through the EDP
the poor engaged on their own terms. The interaction between the host and participant is not about a
specific sector, project or need but rather about witnessing and understanding one person's
experience with poverty. It allows the participant to get beyond theory and jargon and distil the issues
and complexities poverty with clear images and experiences. “ I knew the common definitions of
poverty, that more than a billion people live on a less than a dollar a day, but now poverty has a face
and a name” says Bernard Dunnzlaff, member IFAD Executive Board.
The EDP aims to temporarily bridge the gap between “donor” and “beneficiary” and encourage
decision-makers from development agencies to incorporate poor people's experiences and ideas
into poverty alleviation strategies. Through the EDP, by living with a host, participants can directly
engage poor people and observe and take part in their normal daily life. The EDP is not an official
field visit or a monitoring visit, which would be scheduled with a specific pre-defined focus or
agenda; instead its focus is a person and it is about observing and understanding poverty through
that individual's life. One IFAD Executive Board member from a developing country shared: “Living
with Sitaben I discovered that she is really vulnerable. Very, very vulnerable. She is vulnerable in
terms of natural resources; she is vulnerable in terms of land; she is vulnerable in terms of money. I
was wondering about the cause of her vulnerability.”
Recognizing that the EDP is a temporary exposure with one host family, it cannot be expected to
provide broad policy implications or a large-scale avenue of participation by the poor in development
strategies. It is instead about bearing witness to the struggle, challenges and achievements that one
person experiences in her daily life and relating that to one's one actions. This individual change can
in turn lead to organizational change.
The EDP approach can be used to sensitize the non-poor to poverty and can be particularly useful
for sensitizing government officials or development agency staff living in developing countries to the
ground reality of poverty through a more substantial interaction. This process of sensitization can
affect attitudinal change, which in turn can lead participants to change their practices and policies.
Studying poverty through statistics, research, reading or workshops can achieve understanding to a
participants. This selection and listing was done after consultation with the different departments
teams of SEWA. These women workers were involved in different trades. The social and
geographical conditions of the villages and urban areas were taken into consideration. Biographical
details about these women's lives were noted. This information was documented in English for the
participants and in Gujarati for the co-facilitators.
An orientation meeting was organized for the aagewans (local leaders/host women) to give them a
clear idea about their role in the EDP, it's objective and to give them an indepth understanding as to
why the participants were to stay with them. The purpose of this meeting was also to inform them
about the duration for which the participants were to live with them and to address any doubts or
questions, if any.
These aagewans (host women) were also explained what care and special measures they should
observe vis-à-vis the participants' accommodation, food and their work.
The co-facilitators were briefed about their role in the EDP - their responsibilities as a co-facilitator,
the village to which they were assigned, and which aagewan (local leader) they were to stay with.
During the EDP
During the EDP, proper coordination and contract was maintained with the resource person and the
co-facilitators. SEWA Academy played an important role in creating the atmosphere to facilitate
the EDP.
EDP overview:
The overview was especially for the participants' understanding. It was to explain the three key elements
of the EDP : Exposure, Reflection and Dialogue
An EDP presentation was organized for the participants explaining the entire process, the
preparations for the programme, issues that were considered while preparing for the EDP including
the safety measures taken for the health and sanitation of the participants.
The exposure in the villages and urban areas city was followed by the reflections of the aagewans
(hosts) and the participants for which required arrangements were made by SEWA Academy.
Documentation:
Academy adopted two methods of process documentation: Written, Video
Cultural Programme:
A cultural and folk dance programme was organized for the guests, and also to give them a glimpse of
Indian culture.
Senior members of the SEWA family and the core team members were also invited.
This was an opportunity for them and the IFAD guests to interact and exchange views.
In sum, based on its years of experience, in organizing Exposure Dialogue Programmes (EDP),
SEWA Academy organized a special EDP for the IFAD guests.V. Goals of EDP: Bearing Witness and Inspiring Change
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certain level but the immersion experience of an EDP can reach a deeper more personal level. A
deeper understanding of and sensitivity towards poverty can provide policy-makers with an
alternative lens through which to evaluate the impact of their decisions as well as a broader
understanding of the relationship of their actions to poverty and poverty reduction strategies. By living with a poor person for two or three days and following their daily routine, participants can
gain a deeper and more realistic insight into what poverty is than through brief field visits.
“The EDP gave me the opportunity to spend time and build a unique rapport with a poor family - and
as a result, gain a deeper and more personal understanding of poverty” - Katherine Davis, Journalist,
Communications Division, IFAD. Participants are, for a short time, completely involved in the life of
their host they do not return to a hotel after a difficult field visit. This makes people confront more
acutely the realities of poverty not only from a professional, intellectual or academic level but at a
personal and emotional level. One IFAD participant, after the exposure expressed: “I am full of
emotions. Actually coming from the developing country of Mozambique, I have seen poverty and
hunger. But, after living with Azzuben in Lotiya, I was touched by the problems she faced, I was
really touched. Now, I feel that poverty is a complex issue.”
Beyond understanding more concretely what poverty is, through the exposure participants can better
understand how poor people themselves cope with issues related to poverty on a daily basis and
how they pulled themselves out of it. The EDP provides a more complete, human picture of poverty-
beyond the criteria of ill-being, need and vulnerability to include the strength and agency of the poor.
Raul Hopkins of IFAD shared: “ With most of the team, I was impressed by the courage and strong
identity of our host-ladies and their families. In an economic sense, they were very poor and in many
ways marginalised, and yet they retained a sense of dignity that guided and moved them to
overcome poverty.” Several EDP participants from IFAD talked about the desire and will of people to
develop and an eagerness to move forward during the reflection and dialogue session. One
participant shared, “I was amazed with their desire to move forward - an ambition to have a better
life”. It is critical that those who design development projects and make aid policy decisions do not
consider the poor as passive objects of their assistance.
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, Ahmedabad City
a Tailor from Bapunagar, Ahmedabad City
a handpump repairer from Nabhela, Sabarkantha District
a tailor from Lotiya, Patan District
VI. Participants' Reflection and Dialogue: Relating the Experience to their Work
During the reflection and dialogue phase of the EDP, participants take time to make sense of their
experience and related it back to themselves and their work. Participants from the December 2004
EDP hosted by SEWA for IFAD and the Government of Gujarat discussed how the experience could
help them become more effective and strengthen their interventions in the field.
EDP can be a valuable tool for regaining focus and for re-energizing staff. Sometimes distance from
the end-client, multiple organizational and policy priorities and various interests groups, lobbies and
agendas can cloud the project design process and policy dialogue. The EDP can being people and
the poor back to the center for participants. One IFAD participant shared: “I saw Savitaben fighting
poverty. At the moment, we at IFAD are at a turning point. We are trying to develop effective models
for fighting poverty. The challenge is that we do not forget the direction of the process, only because
we are far away. Looking at Savitaben it reminds me about the importance of keeping the priorities in
the resource allocation process”. The EDP can help reduce the distance from the field and provide
participants with a kind of litmus test to use to evaluate how the decision they are taking and their
actions are helping an individual struggle to fight poverty. The question becomes how does what I
am doing improve life for my host, or for an individual poor person?
EDP also offers an alternative perspective through which to evaluate development interventions and
monitor progress. By living with a poor family and learning their life story, participants can learn more
about what is important to the poor themselves - how they define ill-being, well-being and progress.
It also gives participants a ground level view of how projects and policies impact the poor and are
used and judged by the poor. This can guide them towards new ways of evaluating projects and new
measures of progress that are more in line with the priorities of the poor themselves. One participant
urged during the dialogue: “In IFAD there is a discussion about a corporate indicators for results and
impact management... I would prefer more meetings like the one we had at the village level so we
can have indicators developed at the local (village) level. Let the indicators come from the village
level.” If the aim is to fight poverty, then who can better judge success than the poor themselves?
The EDP also gives participants an idea of how programmes and interventions reach the poor, which
can help improve project and policy design. By spending time with an individual, following her in her
daily routine and learning about her life story participants learn what made her poor, what helped her
struggle against poverty and at points and how outside interventions reached her. Participants can
also learn about her interface with government, NGOs and other institutions, which can give them an
idea of what tool or entry point is most effective at what time and for what purpose. Participants can
learn what intervention or programmes the individual had access to and which ones she used. This
serves the purpose both of understanding access what elements of design facilitate access and
what hinders access and also of understanding the preferences of the poor - what kinds of
interventions do they need or find useful. As one participant from IFAD expressed, “This experience
has now given us a better chance in order to find an alternative to reach the rural poor. SEWA
touched simultaneously most aspects that affect the livelihood of the rural poor.”
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9 87
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The EDP also enables SEWA's facilitators to gain a broader picture of the condition of the poor and
impact of their work outside of the framework of a specific activity or project. The EDP takes the
facilitator out of her sphere of activity and broadens the perspective to include all aspects of poverty
that the member experiences in her life. When staff members make field visits they are focused on
the progress and impact of the particular activity on which they are working. Through the EDP the
facilitator is not making a targeted field visit but is rather looking holistically at the life of one
individual member and the impact in her life of the interplay of the multiple interventions of SEWA
and how each activity impacts and relates to the others.
When used regularly, the EDP can serve as a qualitative performance assessment and progress
check for SEWA. Through the EDP SEWA staff can assess the impact of their work through the
eyes of their members to whom they are ultimately accountable. By living with the member for two
or three days, SEWA's staff can assess changes in the conditions of the life of that member through
join SEWA providing a qualitative measure of performance. This in turn can shape a realignment of
goals and priorities as necessary to remain continually responsive to the situation and needs of
members.
VIII. EDP from the Perspective of the Host
For SEWA's members the EDP is an opportunity to share their daily life their daily routine, their life
story, challenges and hopes. In the reflection and dialogue session members focused on the
significance of this sharing opportunity recounting in detail the activities in which participants had
helped them and conversations they had. Hosts also shared that one of the most significant aspects
of the experience for them was that guests had taken an interest in their lives and work. Savitaben,
an agricultural labourer from Zanzansar shared “They came to see how much we work.” These
women are rarely the focus of such attention in their daily lives and typically have limited
opportunities to exercise voice and share their thoughts so for them the EDP is a unique opportunity
for individual expression.
Their poverty also often prevents them from taking time to take stock of their situation and their life
story - where they started from, where they have reached, what they have done to reach this far and
how much further they still want to go. In this context the EDP is also an opportunity for them to take
a longer-term view of their life and their future plans and re-examine their condition in life and their
needs and plans. As Raziaben, an incense stick roller from Bapunagar commented: “It was an honor
to have served my guests. They shared my routine, my life and also heard my story. My children also
got inspired by them; they now understood the importance of studying to help them get further in life
like my guests.”
As hosts are always selected from the poorest of the poor in their communities, they are often
marginalized in their communities. Most expressed that this was the first time that they had guests.
In most cases the EDP guests also led to other “guests” and visits from curious members of the
community and in many cases the sarpanch of the village also visited the home of the host.
The EDP also shows the importance of qualitative, process-oriented activities such as women's
empowerment and social empowerment. As Katherine Davis of IFAD observed, “many of the EB
directors expressed that one of the major lessons they learned during this trip was that social
empowerment is a prerequisite for economic empowerment” The level and impact of social
empowerment cannot easily be measured and it is difficult to demonstrate in statistics or monitoring
reports, making it difficult to understand its importance and justify its cost with respect to time, human
and physical resources. By living with a poor woman and seeing in how many ways a poor person is
disenfranchised and marginalized, participants can get an idea of the magnitude and significance of
social barriers and norms that the poor have to face. Witnessing first-hand these barriers
contextualizes the importance of social empowerment for economic empowerment.
VII. Reflections of the Facilitators: How EDP Can Help Grassroots-level Field workers
SEWA's experience has shown that EDP is also a useful tool for its own staff members who regularly
work at the grassroots level. The experience of living with a SEWA member for two to three days
observing her daily life and walking in her footsteps for a short while brings SEWA's staff closer in
touch with their members understanding their goals, their needs, their demands - and provides a
personalized frame of reference for their work.
Being a facilitator for and EDP is different from the frequent field visits that SEWA's staff make to
villages working directly with members. Staff members of SEWA regularly go to villages to organize
and mobilize women, train members, conduct needs assessments, implement or support members
in implementing projects and activities and monitor work. The organizer is a facilitator and an agent
of change introducing new ideas and new information to the community and mobilizing and building
the capacity women to take action. The EDP instead provides a detailed look into the life of a
member that is not framed around a particular goal or object. Through the EDP, the facilitator is in
the village to experience the life of a member rather than to affect some kind of change. Rather than
following her own agenda or work-plan in the village as she would for a field visit, the facilitator is
instead following the member's agenda and work-plan. The aim is to observe and understand, not to
motivate change or action. This process helps keep SEWA's staff attune to their members' changing
needs and situations. It also helps them to build and strengthen personal relationships with members
which ultimately makes them more aware of and responsive to members' needs and demands.
Through the EDP the facilitator takes a step back from her typical role of organizer and instead
focuses on learning from the member - learning her life story, what keeps her in poverty and what
she is doing to cope with and move out of poverty.
SEWA's organizers are constantly working to support members climb out of a situation of poverty.
The EDP is a moment for them to try to better understand the environment and conditions they are
working to change in a more holistic manner. The process can act as a reality check or update of
their understanding of members' situations and the strategies for poverty reduction they are
promoting as well as a means for identifying new strategies that emerge from members themselves.
13 14
Seetaben, a salt-worker from Degam shared: “When the guests came to my place, the whole village
gathered. Even my mother-in-law joined in; you see no one wants to come to a poor household...
The whole village came to my house. Good people generally do not come to poor peoples houses.”
Through the EDP the host's standing and interaction with the rest of the community is change, even
if temporarily. She has an opportunity to interact with members of the community with whom she
would otherwise have had little or no contact. IX. Conclusion
EDP can be an effective tool for development agency staff and grassroots organizers to learn from
the poor themselves. The learning experience and the reflection and dialogue eventually lead
participants to action and change. Development agency staff can use this opportunity to translate
this learning and personal change into better policies, projects and organizational change through
their own actions and through the impact of the stories they share of their experience. Through the
EDP participants can go beyond conventional definitions of poverty to develop instead a personal
account of poverty. The EDP can change the perspective from which participants look at poverty
taking what most aid agency staff believe is a familiar subject and their area of expertise and
expanding and deepening their understanding of it. As one IFAD Executive Board member explained
“I must admit, when I put forward the idea of EDP to my board, they saw it as just another
opportunity to escape from the office because they thought that everybody knew what poverty is… I
learnt that poverty has a face, has a name.” By personalizing poverty the EDP leads participants to
revaluate and strengthen their commitment to fighting poverty while also changing the way in which
they think about the poor. Their view of the poor is broadened to include the strength, determination,
dignity and agency of the poor; the strategies that the poor themselves use to fight poverty are
recognized and can potentially be integrated into the larger policy dialogue.
The EDP builds a (temporary) relationship with the poor changing the way participants relate to the
poor. It can be used as a communications tool, an interface with the client - the poor - to make
development professionals more responsive and aware of their end client's needs and condition.
Regular EDPs for development professionals at all levels from donor agencies to grassroots works -
can be used as a tool for regular contact with people where the poor are engaged as individuals.
By living with a poor person, participants gain a frame of reference and a context for the various
models of project design, service delivery and implementation they are working on. The experience
brings participants out of their regular role as policy maker, government official, fieldworker, etc. and
allows them to understand development models, project design, delivery and implementation from
the perspective of an individual poor person. Participants can use this experience as a check for
decisions that they make contextualizing their actions with the potential impact on or reaction from
their host. This can sometimes help in simplifying the complex and conflicting goals and agendas at
play in the policy dialogue by once again bringing the client - a poor individual - to the center.
15 16
Finally, the EDP provides an alternative logical framework for measuring performance. The EDP can
be a tool to assess progress and impact of interventions. As a supplemental evaluation tool it can
add depth and qualitative information that would be missed by conventional surveys or statistics. As
the EDP places the participant in the village context for at least a 24-hour cycle it is an effective tool
for assessing the impact of service delivery and project interventions in real time as they are used by
beneficiaries. This allows for a broader evaluation of projects as the participant is in the village for an
extended, unstructured period of time so is able to assess the impact as it is experienced by
individuals themselves and not only limited to a pre-prescribed set of indicators.
Ultimately, the EDP offers development professionals a tool for better understanding poverty in all its
complexities and layers; through the experience they can come to view poverty not only as a cause,
a statistic or a concept, but as a person. This allows them to better understand the people who they
are ultimately working for and the conditions that they are working to change. The experience can
offer a check against which to assess policies, projects and actions beyond models and theories
against the lived reality of the poor, the client. It is a process that can motivate and strengthen the
commitment of staff, cause them to question and revaluate their views and can help bring the views,
needs and experience of the poor themselves back into the development dialogue.
17
“I was born in Ranavada village in the Kakrej block of Patan District in Gujarat. We
were seven brother and sisters. My father had land. We all used to help him. One day
my uncle recommended to my father to marry me to Babubhai; I was 16 years old.
When I got married and came to my in-laws' house, we lived in a joint family. My in-
laws had bad times. They would pressurize me to ask for money or help from my
father; but how many times could I ask? Eventually we were thrown out of our house.
When this happened my husband was worried about leaving but I kept telling him that
we could make it on our own. We lived in a kacha house in Zanzansar village.
After my first son was born, Babubhai started going to Gandhidham to work as a
labourer on the port. My situation was so bad, that often I slept without food. While
Babubhai was in Gandhidham, I would do some casual work such as fetching water
for other households; they would pay me 10 paisa per pot. I remember one time my
son fell very ill. I had no money to pay for medicine or treatment for him. Suddenly,
Babubhai returned home. When he found out that I had not consulted the doctor for
our son, he was angry with me; he literally beat me up.
Later I started accompanying Babubhai to Gandhidham to work as a port labourer as
well. We would migrate every year; we migrated like this for almost nine years. One
year Babubhai, while he was carrying a heavy load up the wooden plank, slipped. He
suffered a serious back injury. Since then, he has not been able to do any hard
labour.
So, the entire burden has fallen on me. Now, we do not migrate to Gandhidham, but I
work in the village. Whenever the agricultural season is good, I get work on someone
else's fields. Otherwise I cut wood and sell it, or make charcoal from it to sell.
I get agricultural labour work only for four days in a month, which fetches me Rs. 60.
The rest of the days, I cut wood and go to Varahi to sell it. I would walk 7 kms. with a
load of wood and sell it to a sweetmeat shop for Rs. 10/-.
****
18
IX. Host Profile: Savitaben Babubhai Parmar
By Reema Nanavaty, Director Rural and Economic Development, SEWA
Savitaben, though poor, is very resourceful. She worked hard, utilising the local resources available
to earn a livelihood for her family. Though she had to work hard, she was always content and
satisfied with whatever she and her family had. She has strong will-power and courage. She does
not believe in looking back, but aspires for better opportunities and a brighter future. This is her story
as she shared it during our EDP.
We now have four children two boys and two girls. I am determined to educate all my
children. My eldest son is now in class 10 studying in a boarding school. A missionary
Father supports his education.
In the earthquake of 2001, my house collapsed. I felt, as if everything in my life was
gone. But luckily the missionary Father helped us rebuild our house as a pacca
(permanent) house. Also, SEWA brought the 'Jeevika' project to our village. Now, I do
not have to do the back-breaking work of cutting wood all day long. Through Jeevika I
received training on vermi-culture and vermi-compost and I now produce vermi-
compost. My father has given me a buffalo. So now I have sustained income from her
milk, which I sell to the local dairy co-operative. I am also producing vermi-compost. I
feel secured; I am now not worried and am able to make ends meet.
When we had to prepare a village development plan Menaben, SEWA's agwean
(leader) in our village, and SEWA organisers always involved us. Our need for work
was given priority. When it was time to for a village development committee, we all
elected Menaben as the President. But the committee also needed an Accountant
who was literate. So Menaben's, nephew was appointed. The village then asked: how
can the President and Accountant be from the same family? Everybody felt that this
was not a good idea. Menaben stepped down and she proposed my name to be the
President! Everyone in the committee agreed.
I was very nervous. Many of the other members of the committee were people, in
whose house or farm, I was working as labourer. How could I sit with them and take
decisions for the entire village, let alone be their President? But SEWA and Menaben
supported me and gave me the confidence that I could do it. I now discuss the village
development plan with other committee members when before I used to work as a
labourer for them. I also attend meetings of village development committees from
other villages and stand up in front of everyone to report on the progress we have
made in our village at.
****
Today, SEWA organizers and guests have decided to stay at my house; I never have
guests. What would have stopped them from going and staying with Menaben or
other women in our village who are better off than me? My status in the village has
definitely improved. The sarpanch came to my house. How could I ever dream that
the sarpanch would come to my house? So have other village leaders. This stay has
given me recognition and status.”
INDIAN ACADEMY FOR SELF EMPLOYED WOMEN : (SEWA ACADEMY)
The Indian Academy of Self Employed Women is the focal point for all of SEWA's capacity building,
communications and research efforts. The Academy functions as SEWA member's 'University',
providing them with their first introduction to a formal learning environment. It is the organizational
wing responsible for member education, leadership training, literacy, print and video
communications, and research.
The Training Unit in the Academy provides SEWA members with education and capacity building
aimed at self-development. Through encouragement and support, the women increase their self-
confience and leadership skills as well as unite through a common ideology, thus building the SEWA
movement. Poor women have very little opportunity for their own exposure and development.
Hence, they capitalize on learning opportunities provided by SEWA Academy.
n In-house trainings
l Member Education; imparts a common message of Sewa's Value, understanding of SEWA its
contribution to the informal economy, women empowerment, advantages of organising.
l SEWA Movement : enables SEWA leaders to understand the organization, its values and
Gandhian philosophy as well as to build their capacity and capabilities as leaders.
l Advanced leadership (Kadam) : gives detailed information about SEWA's different activities to
high achiveing trainee from the SEWA Movement training.
l SEWA Orientation : helps organizers understand SEWA philosophy and the workplace.
l Organizing Training : fosters understanding of the importance of organizing and achieves
group development of organizers.
l Grass Root Research Training : develops research skills of members.
l Research Methodology : teaches various methods of research and enhances the rigor of
research.
l Documentation : develops process documentation and writing skills in the organisers and the
spearhead team members.
l Reporting : imparts training of report writing to organizers, research, and spearhead team
members.
l Video Replay Training : uses video as a tool for training, which links the district and brings
awareness amongst at grass root level.
l Photography : teaches photography as a medium of communication and documentation.
l Training of Trainers (TOT) : enhances participant's skills as trainers so that they can conduct
trainings using different participatory training methods.
19 21
Sources
SEWA - IFAD Exposure Dialogue Programme Report; (Draft report and transcript of the
EDP sessions); SEWA, December 2004
Davis, Katherine: “Back to Office Report: SEA/IFAD Exposure and Dialogue
Programme”; unpublished report; IFAD, March 2005
Hopkins, Raul: “Back to Office Report: Exposure and Dialogue Programme, India”;
unpublished report; IFAD, February 2005
“Immersions for Policy and Personal Change” IDS Policy Briefing; Issue 22; Institute of
Development Studies; July 2004
Renwick Irvine, Robert Chambers and Rosalind Eyben: “Learning from poor people's
experience: immersions”; Lessons for Change in Policy and Organizations, No. 13;
Institute of Development Studies; 2004
IFAD Update : Issue No. 2 Experiencing poverty up close; February 2006
l Gender : helps participants understand gender issues and their impact on women.
l Adolescent Girls Training : creates a forum for exchanges of information between the rural and
urban girls of SEWA.
n Exposure Dialogue Programme (EDPs)
l Exposure and Dialogue Programmes use the strategies of immersion, reflection and dialogue
to expose senior level technocrats and bureaucrats to the realities of the people whom their
policies and projects might affect. Accompanied by local facilitators, these senior officials
spend a few (two, three or four) nights actually staying in the home of a SEWA member. They
follow her daily routine at home and at work in order to understand poverty from her
perspective. After the exposure, participants reflect on their experiences and enter a process
of dialogue aimed at analysing, understanding and even changing policies to make them more
focused on the needs and reality of women workers in the informal economy.
l Internal Exposure Dialogue Programmes use the same strategy as external EDPs but are for
SEWA organizers. SEWA organizers spend a few nights in the members's home and follow
her daily routine. The reflection and dialogue component focuses on the organizers' work and
what they learned from the exposure to improve SEWA organizing and services.
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INDIAN ACADEMY FOR SELF EMPLOYED WOMEN : (SEWA ACADEMY)Krishna Bhuvan, Near Hariharanand Ashram,Opp. Sakar II, Ellisbridge, Ahmedabad-380 006. (India)Phone : + 91 79 26577115, 26587086, 26580474.Fax : + 91 79 26587708Web. : www.sewaacademy.orgEmail : [email protected], [email protected].