SEWA Academy is the focal point for all of SEWA’s capacity building
and research efforts. In a very basic sense, SEWA Academy functions as our member’s
‘UNIVERSITY’, providing our members their first introduction to a formal
learning environment. It is the organizational wing responsible for basic membership
education and for capacity building, leadership training, communications and research.
A movement requires an
ideological framework and a clear direction understood by all its members. All
participants in the movement must have a common understanding of the vision and the
strategy. Moreover, in a grassroots movement like SEWA, leadership cannot be imposed from
above. It must blossom from below so that the organization can remain dynamic, effective,
and unified. To evoke and inspire such grassroots leadership, education is fundamental.
Besides education and capacity building, it is also important to understand the lives and
work of self employed women and carry that understanding to the women themselves and to
policy makers, activists, academics, and the general public. It is in response to these
needs that the SEWA Academy was created in 1991.
