Acknowledgements
The national workshop to strengthen women’s cooperatives through capacity-building was organized by the Gujarat SEWA Cooperative Federation (Federation), the International Cooperative Alliance Asia and Pacific region (ICA-AP), the national federation of the SelfEmployed Women’s Association (SEWA), SEWA Bharat, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO, Geneva and New Delhi) on Aug 8th – 9th, 2019. It was aimed at the development of grassroots women’s cooperatives and was conducted in collaboration with the ICA-EU Partnership on Cooperatives in Development: People-Centered Businesses in Action.
The workshop had representation from grass-root-level women cooperative leaders, academia, civil society organizations, cooperative federations such as the National Cooperative Union of India (NCUI), government departments responsible for cooperative development and international development agencies like the ILO and ICA. Eminent speakers drawn from the financial services and IT sectors, marketing experts and those with experience in policy-making and capacity-building also participated and contributed their expertise, as well as learned from the grass-root level experiences of women. It was a unique opportunity for dialogue, sharing
and debate among the workshop participants, which revealed the diversity and richness of each participant’s experience across sectors, areas of expertise and geographies.
