Sewa Trade Facilitation Center: Changing the Spool

Case Analysis Report on

‘SEWA Trade Facilitation Center: Changing the spool’

Executive Summary

STFC is a sister organization of a trade union SEWA for facilitation of artisans embroidery work across the globe. It is a not-for-profit organization growing steadily, hence wants to make profit meanwhile sustaining its core values, improving standards. Now, whether organization should go for changing status from not-for-profit to for-profit entity is the main concern. To meet the objectives while solving the problem, organizations can adopt hybrid strategy or may continue with current status with some improvements. Analyzing different options, will lead to the decision of employing one option favoring the legal status change.

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Situation Analysis

The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) union, Ahmedabad, was started by Ela Bhatt for recognition of self-employed women. Initially, Textile Labor Association, which was working for the rights of textile workers, was present. But women of workers’ family were not officially employed; hence, not received any labor benefits, then, SEWA came into picture. SEWA expanded outside the textile sector and organized separate trade cooperatives. It supported cooperatives through funding, resources, training etc.

In 1981, TLA and SEWA parted ways and SEWA became an organization and movement. SEWA worked dedicatedly for the betterment of its members. Members were the shareholders, therefore the owners. SEWA made them build an economic organization. It developed SEWA bank, which offered monetary services to its members.

SEWA started expanding and developing. After 1979, urban based union began to organize self-employed rural women. In1989, SEWA developed a rural base to organize and train embroidery workers in Banaskantha and Kutch after recognizing great potential of women workers. Reema Nanavaty, uplifted workers’ morale, supported and taught them basic market dealings and helped workers in every possible manner. By 1996, Banascraft and KutchCraft Associations were formed and SEWA helped them to build market share.

In 2003, SEWA’s Trade Facilitation Center started when SEWA extended its marketing efforts and incorporated as not-for-profit producers’ collective. Objective of SEWA was to attract market to products featuring women’s skills. STFC came up with its brand “Hansiba”, named after its oldest member, for selling the art.

This brand started facing competition from other brands, and hence felt the need of changing their legal status from not-for-profit to for-profit entity. It was getting difficult from them to sustain the competition. Advisory board members felt this need. But, this may lead to the clashes between the objectives and private shareholders may try to control the members of STFC. Their ultimate objective is to retain the values of organization while expanding the organization.