Ham Sab Ek Hai - "We all are one"

• India houses half the global poor while also having highest young population who are jobless. SEWA created Hum Sab Eak – an Alternative Livelihood Model for informal sector rural households. SEWA has set up a process which expose, encourage, audit and train rural women to promote their homes for tourism by leveraging the rural culture, traditions and nature. Rural households who are looking for alternative livelihoods will be mapped on criteria and if selected will be developed as a homestay which then will work on aggregator model where the SEWA’s district level women’s federations will help them in linking with tourism industry. SEWA has developed capacity of district federations to develop promote and market the rural homestay as business by using technology platform. Under this, capacity building of women host, their technological upgradation, upgradation of houses and market linkages have come out as major pillars of model. 

Women and youth bear the greatest brunt of poverty and unemployment. The distress of young and women in rural area is an economic time bomb. Approximately 35% of SEWA’s million members are youth. A recent survey reaffirmed that agriculture has become redundant and traditional skill based work has become obsolete, there are no jobs for educated, lack of applicable small enterprise skills, inadequate access to capital, and under-utilization of basic technological interventions.  Even the most cursory research review points to the important role of women in rural economies. These factors lead to everything from economic instability to increased migration to urban centers to an entrenched sense of hopelessness. Sustainable employment opportunities in the rural areas are need of the hour so that women enter the workforce. Our solution juxtaposes India’s efforts towards sustainable tourism. Local communities become the motive force for sustainable tourism, especially in preservation of cultural identities and natural heritage. While tempering the impact of the ecological footprint, this can also create the pressure point for an equitable local share in the economic benefits of tourism. The future of these areas is woven to their ability to attain their full potential in the home and labor market.

The programme aims to serve rural young women. They are from remote villages of rural India and from poor families but are educated women and are looking out for work to use their education. In absence of work they are in distress. They know technology and their aspirations are different from their mothers. These young women are second generation members of SEWA. They are more aware then their mothers. They feel that agriculture and animal husbandry has become redundant thus wish to do employment. SEWA plans to serve 500 women from this category who are residing in 10 districts of Gujarat. These women’s families are in poverty since generations and their parents depend on rainfed agriculture or work as agriculture labourer. While many of these people making the move to urban centres do so in search of jobs and better lives, millions end up living in slums, and conditions for the urban poor are going from bad to worse. Today, one in six urban citizens in India live below the poverty line. SEWA plans to work with these young women as well.

In 2017, SEWA launched the pilot programme Hum Sab Eak. Working in five districts throughout Gujarat where 40 rural young women entrepreneurs opened their homes to the globe to invite tourists. The combination of technology, standardization, trainings, specialized assistance, together with intent and fortitude has made it possible to connect the rural young women from deepest villages to connect to the global tourism network and host to have unique experience of tradition, cultural and eco- friendly lifestyle of rural India.  SEWA made is possible by making the rural young women technology savvy to use it for livelihoods and partner with the online portal Airbnb by unique launch of “Rural Airbnb”. Under this initiative the rural grassroots leaders and members of SEWA host tourists in their rural homes. The trained grassroots leaders give the tourists an exposure to the rural community, culture, traditions, rural organic food, folk dance, folk art, music, crafts. The tourists can experience farming of vegetables, fruits, flowers, festival celebrations, local festival mela, learn and experience rural traditional crafts.- an eco-friendly Rural Indian lifestyle SEWA provided specialized business skills training such as basic hospitality, maintaining hygiene level, sanitation, basic amenities, use of technology – internet, feedback analyzing, basic language skills, tablet to communicate, knowing and preservation of culture and heritage. The overall result was a 300% increase in family income. Programme participants reported that those funds supported better food options for their families and educational opportunities for their children. Benefits were not limited to the domestic sphere. Jobs were created for the community at large, boosting revenue for local service providers such as cafes, drivers, artisans, musicians, and dancers. Not only did the initiative increase rural women’s economic—and in some cases social—power, it also raised awareness of the importance of cultural heritage to younger generations. Moreover, members were proud of their ability to use of technology-based tools to access the global tourism networks. Working in collaboration with our members, Hum Sab Eak addressed Pillars of Community Driven Innovation.

We call it innovation because it touches global and local communities the lesson of eco friendly lifestyle with low cost simple technologies touching 5 SDGs. The innovation touches the lives of women, the host livelihood solution to the Last mile poor rural young Women as per their aspiration with low cost- simple technology intervention which opens up door for global customers is the innovation of our solution. This programme also touches SDGs from 1 to 5.  This programme not only give livelihoods to the women host but also helps provide new livelihoods opportunities to the entire village which helps develop local rural economy. Developing cultural heritage tourism will help develop opportunities of developing rural entrepreneurs along the lines of tourism value chain. This also helps develop world view of the local teenagers. While on other hand it also teaches the host eco-friendly minimal usage and waste, self reliant lifestyle and connect to the nature.

These rural women became Global service successful entrepreneur of sustainability is the innovation of this solution. The young rural women’s challenges to enter into livelihood phase and an active partner in the rural economic needs to be addressed

It converts the distress of rural youth into constructive global citizen who values culture and heritage.  It also helps to positively change the mindset and resect towards work of the communities and reduces migration.  

It provide economic value to traditional culture, arts & crafts which develops it’s inclusiveness in economy through women.

The solution works to provide access to the grass root women from the poorest of the poor and remote rural areas to platform economy. In the current technological revolution, the solution works to ensure that the poorest of the poor also benefit by the use of technology and ensure an inclusive process. This provides them with livelihood, employment and income from alternative sources also.

Based on our learning from Hum Sab Ek Hai initiative for Rural Homestays form past two years, SEWA is working to develop digital E-Module for the training program to the members. All our members and homeowners have at least one smartphone and internet connection per household. These training modules will be disseminated through our digital channel so it will be more cost effective. We have also worked on the tourism data analytics to understand which areas in the region have potential for tourism and which are the places where government is also working on tourism development. This will align the activities with the Government goals to promote tourism in the sate. Thus the solution provides technology in the hands of the grass root women from the farthest of the villages and thereby providing them with sustainable livelihoods, boosting the local economy with allied services, checking migration through an inclusive process.

Women face barriers to full employment. Rain fed agriculture in small land, failed crops, illiteracy, lack of last mile connectivity and absence of alternative skills make them dependent on unorganized money lenders which leads them to debt traps. The younger women are more educated but are averse to employment in the debt-ridden agriculture sector. Our solution aims to address employment which includes sustained work, skills enhancement, and social (healthcare, childcare and shelter) security.

Cultural and heritage tourism is a huge potential sector, with Government of India promoting it through development of heritage and tourist sites. We aid homeowners to develop their unutilized space as homestays as a means to generating income thereby developing rural entrepreneurs throughout the tourism value chain, while infusing much needed capital into village economies. Moreover, it will add economic value to the traditional culture and arts & crafts skillsmanship, while bringing in technology and innovative livelihoods opportunities to the attention of rural youth thereby suppressing urban migration. Exposure of locals to domestic and foreign tourists, also encourages a shift in traditional mindsets thereby ensuring inclusion of women in economic growth. Integrating women within a network of global tourism benefits the whole collective economically.

This solution also shifts the burden of hospitality from resource-intensive “commercial” hospitality providers to eco-friendly homestays by micro-entrepreneurs. Our solution meets the challenge of creating a sustainable balance between visitors without sacrificing natural and cultural heritage through a participatory model.

Currently, we have 40 homestay listed on Airbnb site and 500 are potential homestays, which we have the plan to cover in next phase and 10000 in next 3 years. These homestays are in deep last mile villages of Gujarat, in Patan, Surendranagar, Vadodar and Mehsana.  These women are farm labourers

The 'Hum Sab Ek Hain' initiative was an attempt to explore new livelihood models for rural women members of SEWA. While expansion is on the cards in Gujarat, we are all set to take the collaboration to Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Sikkim, and Nagaland

SEWA plans to help establish these rural women homestay hosts to setup their own social enterprise which can enroll 10000 young poor women from rural, peri urban and urban areas to be part of this social enterprise and transform their lives and improve their local economy of the area.

Till date, SEWA has been working using tools, models, strategies and approaches that have enabled SEWA to grow and thrive for more than 4 decades. Now, it is important for us to see whether we need to develop new approaches and strategies to adapt to the complexities and requirements of the developments that are rapidly happening as well as the changing profile and aspiration of our young generation members, which in a way is the result of SEWA's efforts for a period of more than four decades. Therefore it is very important that SEWA understand the aspiration of young generation and remain relevant in next 2-3 decades and develop the plan to evolve the future of SEWA.

As a step forward, SEWA plans to take up Hum Sab Eak social enterprises of SEWA as a pilot to expand and strengthen.  

The main strength is we have list of around 500 women who would like to become host for Hum Sab Eak. These women are from poor and most disadvantaged communities. They need support to first modify their homes to be able to host the tourist. The modifications require anywhere from INR 5000 to INR 50000 per house. These women are daily wage earners and thus face challenges to get affordable credits from banks. Thus linkages with financial institutions of affordable loans to rural host women to upgrade their houses

Secondly the social enterprise will be new owned and managed by host women and thus they seek support to scale up marketing to ensure atleast 10 guests per host covering 10000 hosts.

Pitch in idea to some funders for financial support for doing up the houses and the trainings to the host ladies. Support will be required for continuous monitoring of the home stays at the district level in the initial years. Since hospitality is a new area, initial support will be required. Following this, the initiative will be self sustainable.

We are a team of seven  who work centrally and help liaison and coordinate with the hosts and plan for the capacity building support while others are located across 3 districts to manage standardized activities. The senior team of SEWA helps in connecting with like-minded organisaitons for marketing and financial support and monitor the growth and needs of host women to grow it.

Moreover, we have engaged with local universities for a team of five students who will work on this project for the next two years under the guidance of a professor who holds a doctorate in tourism.

The innovation is mainly a connect of tourism industry with rural women and culture. This requires bridging equilibrium between both segments to ensure smooth development of rural tourism and its success.  This requires skills of management, Information technology, and liaisoning on one hand while on hand also need to have a well-developed connection with rural women who are young and aspire to become entrepreneurs. An expert professor in field of tourism industry with her team from Ahmedabad University is providing their services to guide, monitor and expand number of women and strengthen their services while SEWA’s IT team and SEWA Manager ni School team provides IT connect and capacity building support to build the capacities of host women and make their home stays visible while SEWA is providing support to bridge the linkages between SEWA host members and these services providers to ensues inclusive developing and ownership to make social enterprise of women in loner run. SEWA has both kind of human resource having required skills who are spread in Ahmedabad and 9 districts of Gujarat. Moreover, SEWA also has membership and such skilled team members in other 14 states of India. Further SEWA also have grassroots connect in the neighbouring countries in Asia. SEWA’s experts are qualified skilled people and have vast experience working on developing innovative grassroots women friendly technologies. 

SEWA is partnering with Ahmedabad university to make a system review and streamlining by making policies, logo and requirement of review system to strengthen and to smoothen process of expansion.

The government of Gujarat state is implementing a plan to develop rural tourism. The principal goal is to strengthen local economies and provide new employment opportunities in villages. Given SEWA’s mission and recognized history of impact, our programs are ideally suited to be a part of this important work. By expanding Hum Sab Eak, we will further our own strategic priorities as well as respond to requests from government officials to provide support to more young women entrepreneurs. Moreover Ahmedabad University will create opportunities for students under the guidance of their professors to assist with project monitoring and evaluation.

Airbnb will help expand homestays and experiences for domestic and international tourists. In addition to marketing support, they will provide valuable visitor data to help us better determine needs and expectations.

SEWA members’ economic and sister organisations will assist with business and financial workshops and services. Our new RUDI-Kamla Cafe and districts associations will co-host events to attract tourists to our project areas.  

In next 5 years SEWA plans to cover 10000 women as rural cultural homestay in 5 states of India who can have atleast 120 guests a year.  This will cover back end process of strengthening quality of hosts, making policy for host guests, develop cultural tourism thematic trips, developing literature, make Hum Sab Eak visible through offline and online platforms and connect through local govenrment’s tourism agenda and private players and in longer run to make their own social enterprise.

Following is the narrative Social Business Model Canvas.

Key Activities : Based on the pilot programme’s success, SEWA endeavors to expand the reach of Hum Sab Eak by increasing the number of participants to 1000 young women working in various cultural tourism sectors. Activities will take place in two phases: The first will focus on individual capacity building while the second will focus on product and experience development.  Specific activities will include a) Use of Technology to ensure livelihoods for Rural urban youth b) Financial Inclusion c) Capacity building d) Market Promotion and Development e) Policy formulation and developing Quality champions

• Type of Interventions: Micro loans, Trainings, exposures, 
• Segment: international tourism, national tourism, students on social work, Heritage tourism, 
• Value proposition: Immerse in rural culture and heritage
• Partners: Districts Associations for listing, booking and feedback services, SEWA Manager ni School for trainings,
• Channels : Local banks, local tourism industry

SEWA initiated the innovation with pilot project which helped us understand the technical and funding requirement to successfully execute the programme. In the initial years, it requires support to build capacities of women, ongoing monitoring, loans to make them modify their homes and in longer run the host become financially viable. SEWA plans to federate hosts into social enterprise. Social Enterprise will be a key to sustainability of the intervention financially and institutionally.

SEWA’s experiences has shown that gaining access to technology, capacity building and formation of social enterprises of the informal sector women helps them to grow significant livelihood opportunities, develop local economy and align with values.

In long run, SEWA may plan for the investment in the social enterprises by evaluating the alternatives of funding SEWA with a mandate to catalyse inclusive growth plans to facilitate capital market access for its impact focused social enterprises.

Currently the focus will be on support to empower grassroots women to take exposure to such rural homestay and build their capacities to be able to make them host and their homes and pleasant and satisfactory home for guests. Following this, the initiative will be financially self sustainable. SEWA has currently 40 women who have listed their homes while 500 more sisters are waiting to become hosts. SEWA hosts have earned more than USD15000 and hosted over 500 guests from across Asia, USA and Europe.

Solve would help us to expand our portfolio to 500 women by building a network of host and promotion of the rural cultural homestay to link to global tourist network. SEWA is looking for the partnership in areas of

1) technological innovations

a) which can make the platform of tourism userfriendly for grassroots rural women.

b) Technology which can eliminate the language barrier

c) technology which can help grassroots women to develop a tool for reaching out to potential tourist -access public statistical data of tourist and to promote their homestays

4) Develop digital self learning customized e module on rural tourism and e hospitality

5) Develop tool which can connect homestay owners to other services e.g. government events, local festivals and fairs, transport information to attract more tourist.  

2) Promotion and Marketing platform

a) to connect to national tourist

b) to connect to international tourist

c) to connect to tourism partners

3) Developing Publication material: Seek a partner who can help develop attractive brochures, stories for the tourism industry nationally and globally

4) Capacity building of rural young women in areas of global tourism platform viz becoming tourist guide, translator etc.

5) Funding resources for expansion of existing pilot model  

SEWA is looking for the partnership in areas of

1) technological innovations

a) which can make the platform of tourism userfriendly for grassroots rural women.

b) Technology which can eliminate the language barrier

c) technology which can help grassroots women to develop a tool for reaching out to potential tourist -access public statistical data of tourist and to promote their homestays

4) Develop digital self learning customized e module on rural tourism and e hospitality

5) Develop tool which can connect homestay owners to other services e.g. government events, local festivals and fairs, transport information to attract more tourist.  

2) Promotion and Marketing platform

a) to connect to national tourist

b) to connect to international tourist

c) to connect to tourism partners

3) Developing Publication material: Seek a partner who can help develop attractive brochures, stories for the tourism industry nationally and globally

4) Capacity building of rural young women in areas of global tourism platform viz becoming tourist guide, translator etc.

5) Funding resources for expansion of existing pilot model  

• With other platform economy like Airbnb to help expand homestays and experiences for domestic and international tourists. In addition to marketing support, they can provide valuable visitor data to help us better determine needs and expectations.
• Technical support for developed technology based tools, training modules to the host women on hospitality and support for ongoing analysis.

The prize money will be utilsied to build capacity of 1000 young rural peri urban and urban women as a host and link them with the tourism industry to be able to make their livelihoods sustainable.  The prices money will be purely used in exposure visits, capacity building and linking them with the financial institutions and tourism industry. This will ensue sustainable income to not only host women but also generae local employment opportunities to other community members in terms of transport, food eateries, art and cultural promotors, interpreters etc. and help develop local economy with more livelihoods opportunities within villages reducing distress of households and ensuring income and food security.

The prize money will help women to become host and become visible in economy. Even the most cursory research review points to the important role of women in rural economies. The future of these areas is woven to their ability to attain their full potential in the home AND labor market. SEWA’s pilot project not only increase rural women’s economic—and in some cases social—power, it also raised awareness of the importance of cultural heritage to younger generations. Moreover, members were proud of their ability to use of technology-based tools to access the global tourism networks. With this proposal we want to build upon this success by further bolstering the socio-economic and cultural role women in their communities