SEWA's water campaign aims to (1) give poor women access to reliable clean water and (2) build their capacity to own and manage local water supplies. The campaign organizes grassroots women and has established water committees in over 1,500 villages. Activities include developing new water sources, reviving old sources, upgrading infrastructure, and training women leaders. As a result, women's time and health have improved as they face less hardship obtaining water. SEWA also works to sustain these impacts through continued education, advocacy, and establishing a revolving loan fund managed by village committees.

1. Presentation
of
CAPACITY BUILDING OF WOMEN FOR
WATER MANAGEMENT
By
Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
At :
"National Conference on Women-led Water Management,"
5-6 November 2012

2. SEWA - AN INTRODUCTION
SEWA is a member based
organisation founded in
1972 which has grown
today as a family with more
than 13,25,138 members
(from nine states of India).
Two-thirds of its members are from the rural area and
they are small farmers and agricultural labour.
• SEWA’s two main goals are:
• Full employment,
• Self - Reliance

3. SEWA’s Water Campaign
• Seeks to give poor women access to a reliable and safe water
supply
• To build their capacity to become the owners and the managers
of the local water supply instead of mere users.
• Spearhead teams, teams of grassroots women, play a leading role
in the water campaign
• Today more than 460000 women spread over 1500 villages and 14
districts of Gujarat (India) have joined the water campaign.
SEWA’s water campaign include two types of activities:
• Activities that increase the capacity and awareness of grassroots women
• Activities that directly improve the quality of the local water supply

4. Problem
• Women and water are closely interrelated, as women are
the main users of the local water sources.
• women are spending up to 6 hours a day during summer to
fetch water.
• women loose valuable time and energy that could have
been used for income generating activities;
• health suffers due to the heavy loads they have to carry
over long distances;
• the water is often of an inferior quality.
• entire villages are forced to migrate in search of water.

5. Objective of the water Campaign
• Access to clean drinking water is the primary right of
every human being as it is basic necessity of life, livelihood,
health & progress.
• Creation of new water resources
• Revival of old dry local water resources
• Up gradation of water management tools
• Ownership of water resources for women
• Alternative employment option for women in Arid areas
• Development of sustainable resources for natural disaster
prone villages

6. Demands & Massage
Demands Message
We want to develop Clean water is our basic
sources of drinking right, we cannot live without
water in every village. water, without water we
cannot be healthy, our
Local women should
employment is severely
have control over and
affected because of lack of
manage our water
water, we migrate with our
sources.
families and animals,
We want to collect and leaving home and health,
save rain water. because without water we
cannot survive.

7. Working Strategy
• Mass mobilization-through gram Sabhas
• Regular meetings, exposure and advocacy for policy
change
• integrated approach of women, water and work.
• Activities such as deepening of lakes, well recharging hand
pump repairing &installation of new hand pumps
• Increasing awareness among the committees about the
present scenario of climate change and global warming
and equipping them toe stand
• Working closely with the local government.
• SEWA does not believe in creating parallel structures.

8. The Water Campaign has up till now
organized
• Gramsabhas – 973 village
• Video replay – 214 villages
• Street play – 25 villages
• Rally & Prabhat Phery – 307 villages
• Water committees – 700 villages
• Spear head team meeting – 252 meetings
• Exposure visits - 21 visit

9. Detailed Activities
• To develop, maintain, revive and manage traditional and
modern sources of safe water with women controlling the
same.
• Education and Awareness Building at local levels.
• Building community capacity to manage and maintain
water systems.
• Building women’s technical cadre to make them efficient
resource managers. Impart trainings pertaining to
technical and managerial aspects which include
• Establish partnership with private sector organisations
and corporatize women’s organisations to make them
commercially viable entities.
• Water–related advocacy at District level – liasoning with
Government agencies to influence water-related policies

10. Hand Pump Repairing Activity
Mason Training

11. Well Development
Well with Innovative Pully

12. Rally for Awareness
Roof Rain Water Harvesting With
Small Hand Pump

13. Impacts of the Water campaign
• The quality of the local water supply has improved;
hence, women need to spend less time and energy on
fetching water.
• The capacity to cope with drought periods have
improved and families no longer need to migrate in
search of water.
• Women have grown from mere users of the local
water supply into owners and managers of the local
water supply.

14. Main effects of the Water Campaign
• Women became leaders in both water distribution &
management. They were finally the owners and managers of
their work for e.g. Hand Pump Repairing and The Group Water
Supply Scheme.
• Quality of the local water sources and their management
improved.
• Increased employment generation opportunities for the Women.
• Women’s health problems decreased.
• Women have become capable of fighting against natural
calamities like drought and earthquake.
• Increased hours of work leading to higher income generation.

15. Sanitation
• Sanitation in rural Gujarat, perhaps must be one of
the most neglected areas.
• Almost all houses in a village without latrines and
bathrooms.
• There is no waste collection truck, which will clean
the streets and fields of human excreta.
• Outbreaks of diseases like Cholera and malaria even
in this day.

16. SEWA's initiative
• While SEWA was designing houses that would
accommodate the villagers' taste, needs and also be
earthquake resistant, it felt that It should have sanitation
facilities also.
• This idea was initially met with tough resistance from the
villagers.
• However, the SEWA aagyewans (leaders) in three villages
took the initiative of building latrines in their own houses.
• The aagyewans did not force others to follow them, rather
left the decision to each one. Slowly, the villagers saw
the immense benefit the latrines offer, the ease to use
them and the simplicity of the whole process.
• Today there are 2350 latrines already built in these
villages and the plans to make 350 more

17. Innovative Idea’s
The Blue fund
• A greater number of rural women now have access to
water regularly and without having to travel long distances.
As a result of this time saved, economic activities have been
developed in areas such as salt farming, forestry and
artisan work.
• Portions of the income generated from these enterprises
have been pooled as a revolving fund whereby loans, Blue
Credit, will be disbursed for water related activities.
• This fund is known as the Blue Fund and the loans
disbursed, as Blue Credit. As a result of investment in
water related activities and infrastructure, average daily
income will increase by Rs. 60 (1.50 USD).

18. Cont…
• The fund will be utilized to implement the
activities in the villages as per the needs and the
demands of the villagers.
• Increase in employment and revenue generation.
• Building collective organised strengths of
women as water users, managers and owners
would reduce their vulnerability to natural
calamities

19. Climate Change
• Over the last few years, the rainfall pattern has
changed; the incidence of flooding has increased,
and the areas affected by floods have increased.
• It is the poor farmer who is affected most by the
effects of climate change – a fact corroborated by
the increasing trend of farmer suicides.
• Availability of drinking water has become a major
concern due to receding water table.

20. Cont…
SEWA undertakes the following activates to equip the
communities to stand in the scenario of climate change.
• Member-based educational programs.
• Organize national level policy dialogues.
• Identifying mitigation and adaptation policies.
• Undertake activities with a view to reducing the CO2 emission.
 Organize round table with private sector with a view to poverty
eradication and sustainable natural resource management
• Participatory decision-making must be encouraged to make
sure that all affected groups are involved in decision-making on
climate change.

21. SEWA’s Water Campaign - A Water
Company Model
• A unique model of a grass roots water company in
the Peoples Sector.
• This makes the Company Sustainable.
• Thus while the campaign builds the capacities of
the local women, the company helps in providing
them access to information technology tools and
fund to undertake the activities.

22. Sustainability
• Active involvement of the grassroots women and their
capacity building ensures that the outputs and impacts
of the campaign are sustainable.
• For instance, women are trained how to maintain the
roof rainwater harvesting structures, water
committees have been established in many villages.
• SEWA links up with local water board to generate
additional funds for the maintenance of village water
sources. the maintenance fund is governed by the
village water committee itself.

23. Commitment
• Initiating and running the water campaign has only been
able because of the commitment from all the involved
stakeholders, especially grassroots women.
Future challenges lying ahead of SEWA
• Widen—involve more women—and deepen—include
more activities such as micro watershed development—
the water campaign.
• Explore ways to replicate the water campaign elsewhere
in India and the region of South-Asia.
• Grassroots women need to be prepared for and included
in current developments such as globalization,
privatization, and decentralization.

24. Lesson Learned
• Unless organizations owned by women water users come up
to manage water resources, the water sector will remain
unbalanced in favour of men and exploitative, overused
and over consumed.
• Simultaneously, the existing water institutions – Gujarat
Land Development Corporation, Gujarat Water Supply
and Sewerage Board, etc. must refocus on poor women’s
water needs and build their capacity.
• When men owned land, ownership of water by women has
provided counter balancing economic and gender power.
Think of water in relation to land and vegetation.
• Key to women’s effective involvement in forestry is through
their access to water. Tress cannot grow without water. Let
women own water in forestry sector.

25. Cont….
• Key to biodiversity is through diverse range of water
management initiatives: private, public, joint and other.
• The focus should be on the watershed users, the poor
women anong them, to make it integrated. This means
addressing credit, market, social and other needs of the
users of watershed.
• Equity not only between women and men but also
between poor women and not so poor women is
important. This means, recognizing poor women as
watershed users in individual capacity as well as in a
group.
• The most important method or tool for mainstreaming is
parting with financial and management powers: without
that no tool or method can mainstream poor women in
natural resource management

26. Recommendations
• The state has to recognize and enshrine the right to
water as a human right that entitles everyone to safe,
adequate, and physically accessible water for personal
and domestic uses.
• Local communities should own, control and manage
their water resources, in which women’s participation at
all levels - decision making, implementation and
management should be at least 50% Institutional
mechanism should be provided to women for that.
• Local water resources should be built and strengthened
by creating new catchments and using the existing ones.
• A multi-source approach should be adopted for domestic
and drinking water supply.
• All water policies and programmes (state and the
national level) should be examined from the gender
perspective

27. Cont…
• Wherever women’s groups and women’s water user’s
organizations are effective in managing local water
resources, the state should develop a long term
partnership and not a annual contract and tender system.
• There should be a holistic approach to water resource
management with a view to coordinate among different
departments such as watershed, drinking water,
agriculture, forestry and environment, health, rural
development and urban development. Drinking water
department may take the lead in coordination.
• Clear financial allocations for the following:
• capacity building, gender sensitization and community
management for grassoots communities (priority for
women), government, NGOs and other stakeholders in
the water sector
• awareness camps mostly at the grassroots level on issues
relating to degradation of environment with a focus on
water

28. Cont…
• building local water source structures and its distributive
systems
• Special attentions need to be given to sanitation and hygiene
integrating the component of safe drinking water.
• Develop a participatory monitoring system with adequate
representation of all stakeholders including grassroots
women.
• Appropriate representation from civil society, particularly
women’s organizations working in the area of water in
decision-making bodies of water management at the state
and the national level.
• Establishment of National Water Resource Centers, easily
accessible to all stakeholders.

29. THANK YOU