Tatsuya Matsuura:

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. Welcome, and thank you very much for joining the AOA Webinar today. I’m Tatsuya Matsuura, AOA, and I’m moderator of this webinar. And today we have three presenters from three countries, Tanaka-san from CO-OP Kyosai in Japan. And next, Silvida-san from Kasagana-ka Mutual Benefit Association in Philippines. And finally Mirai-san, from National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative Limited in India. Thank you very much for accepting to give speeches today. This webinar will be the fourth in this series, as a theme of “Towards Better Future By Addressing Social Challenge”, which is related to goal one, goal three, and goal four, goal five, and goal 11 in 17 SDGs. We believe this series of SDGs webinar will assist our members in understanding SDGs for mutual insurance, recognizing members activities for SDGs and developing their business related to SDGs. First of all, AOA chair, Fumio Yanai, is giving you an opening address.

Fumio Yanai:

I’d like to say a few words of greeting from nine countries around the world, we have the participation of many people today. Thank you so much for joining. Now going off track somewhat in our neighboring country, China. After the winter Olympics, now the Paralympics are being held and as was the case in the Olympics and Paralympics in summer in Tokyo last year, we are mesmerized by the drama and performance of the participants. Especially para-athletes view their disability as individuality and devote themselves to the sport, heart, and soul, and move many people. And I think they are appealing their importance of thinking in a future oriented manner and overcoming difficulties. On the other hand, we hear about the situation in Ukraine every day on the news and on the web, and I think that we need to appreciate the fact that we are in a position to engage in future oriented activities toward a sustainable society.

It is because we are living in such times, that we must aim for a sustainable society and do what we can in our daily lives. Today’s webinar is under the title Toward a Better Future By Addressing Social Challenges. And I would like to hear from three organizations that are on a daily basis tackling these social issues, and they have the commonality that they target women, and the keywords here are money, health, socially disadvantaged persons, such as women, children, and persons with disability, education on finance and insurance literacy. I think the characteristic here is that issues of society and people’s daily lives are to be solved, and the aim is the realization of a society where no one gets left behind and the cases show the integrated approach. We have from CO-OP Kyosai, Ms. Tanaka, and from Philippines, Ms. Silvida, and from India, SEWA, Ms. Mirai, thank you for accepting to speak to us today and I hope that all of you will stay until the end, thank you.

Tatsuya Matsuura:

Thank you, Mr. Yanai.

So now let us begin today’s speeches, first is Tanaka-san from CO-OP Kyosai, and she’s going to talk about aiming to create communities where people can stay healthy and happy. And Tanaka-san will be speaking in Japanese. So if you’d like to listen, please use this English translation icon. So Tanaka-san, would you start. So I’m handing the baton to Tanaka-san.

Miki Tanaka:

Good afternoon ladies and gentleman, I’m from CO-OP Kyosai, and my name is Miki Tanaka. And thank you for spending your valuable time with us today. Before I start, I’d like to introduce myself somewhat. I graduated from a junior college and then I entered a regional or local cooperative. And I’m going to be talking about these local cooperatives in my talk and in a local cooperative, I was in charge of home deliveries, in other words, that means that the food and daily items are transported to people’s homes by truck. And then I switched to the insurance department. And then right now I am seconded at CO-OP Kyosai. So at CO-OP Kyosai, it is a position where we will pay the cooperative money or the insurance. And so contribution activities and also the contribution to members are promoted. And I want to introduce one person today here to my right is a red bear, this is Cosuke, and he’s also an employee, and to the members he’s very much loved. And I also have a lot of love for this character.

Now let us go back to my materials. Today, I am talking about the power of connections, so that people can stay healthy and happy in their communities. So I’d like to introduce the activities of CO-OP Kyosai. Before I talk about the details, I’d like to give an outline of the organizations and consumer cooperatives in Japan. That is, last year we changed the name of our organization in English to CO-OP Kyosai, Kyosai in English could mean cooperative or mutual insurance. The word Kyosai in Japanese means helping each other or supporting each other. And so this word has a very warm connotation. And therefore We decided to use the word Kyosai per se here. This shows the overview of CO-OP Kyosai and also the consumer cooperatives in Japan. And based on law, we are a Federation and we conduct insurance activities. And as of March 2021, we had 8.67 million policy holders. And we have seen the pandemic from 2020, and there are members and families that are increasing their membership and also less are quitting.

And in March of this year, we have 8.81 million members. Right with the the pandemic, we make payments, even if you are getting treated at home. Therefore we expect more than 17 billion in payments. Now under the consumer co-op law, let me briefly explain consumer co-ops, I work there too, that is, I worked in a local co-op, and the number of members is 23 million and about 40% of Japanese households belong to these local co-ops, and they have retail and delivery so that the safe, secure foods can be delivered to their members. Also, other than the local cooperatives, there is our federation, these provide insurance and also sometimes they provide the operation of hospitals too.

Let me talk about local co-ops here, and you see the store and home delivery photos here, and home delivery is a unique system every week on the same day, on the same time you visit the member and you deliver the goods that was ordered the week before, and so you provide the same kinds of goods and you meet the people and you have good communication. I did this kind of job too, and I looked forward to speaking with the members and our products, the staff working at the co-op, will try to expand a membership by making various proposals. At the co-op we develop products and try to improve getting input from the members. A lot of the products have been made or improved that as a result of the views of the members. And well, we have for CO-OP Kyosai, a similar attitude to products and we are repeating improvements to our products.

At CO-OP Kyosai, we have the product called Tasukeai, which was launched in 1984. Initially it was 300 or 400 yen a month as a premium, so it was very small amounts. And when I entered the co-op, there was a course for 400 yen, which is about a cup of coffee. And we provided such information to our members. And in the 1980s, when CO-OP Kyosai started, life insurance, it was not so much for women and children, but rather the men in the households wanted their product. In other words, the men were working, and some women were working part-time, but they were mainly engaged in the housekeeping and child rearing. But of course, women and children could get sick or get injured and be hospitalized and therefore medical or health insurance or the hospital visit kinds of the insurance became necessary for women and children too.

Now you see the line up, you have Tasukeai and various other products, and the content and the duration are different and you can choose what is necessary for your own life. So I’ve been talking about CO-OP Kyosai, and the local cooperatives, the regional cooperatives, and the relationship between CO-OP Kyosai and regional co-ops, I think have become a bit more clear, we have partnerships in promoting our activities. There are the retail stores and also the home delivery and staff try to provide information to the members and expand the circle. For example, if you see that a child has been in injured, inform the members that if you are insured, you could get the insurance payment.

The staff themselves have the feeling that they want to be useful to the members and they show empathy. And that kind of feeling I think is communicated to CO-OP Kyosai, and sometimes that is linked to improvement of products. So because the regional co-ops are in the community, they can come up with such ideas. And I think that is the value and characteristic of CO-OP Kyosai, and I think that we are fortunate to be able to promote our business in this way, and we play our respective roles together.

Now I’d like to show you some concrete activities from the next slide. The first activity is disaster relief. Today is March 11th, and in 2011, that was when the great east Japan earthquake struck. And co-ops all over Japan put in water and also food in trucks and they headed towards the affected area. And these trucks, I think the members were able to look at these trucks and feel the linkage to those people affected. And it was also very moving for me. And there’s the medical insurance, there’s also the damage to homes and we have system where relief money is paid in the case of a disaster. So that is because members and staff want to help each other in the case of the disaster. And at the time of Japan, great East Japan earthquake 486 persons went to the site and visited the resident and tried to provide this relief money as soon as possible, this could not just be done by the staff of CO-OP Kyosai. And the members were very grateful, and they said that they were very thankful that people came to visit them from so far away and made our own feelings stronger to try to provide relief.

It was truly gratifying that members and the staff were able to help the people in afflicted areas. But also recognize that there was so many people who did not yet enjoy the protection and coverage and felt the need that we must further promote and expand the coverage by our products. The staff members of the cooperatives also work together to encourage people to further claim and try to process it quickly as possible. Now, next is the so-called pink ribbon activities.

For awareness raising, we are providing this campaign so that there is awareness through self checks for the early detection of breast cancer and spread of importance of cancer coverage. So with this campaign we’re encouraging people to detect the cancer, as that is possible. A week ago, chair has said that the Paralympics had opened. We also support that the people with disability skiers. We signed a gold partner agreement with the Japan Paris Ski Federation. And it was in March 2019, that CO-OP Kyosai supported the CO-OP Kyosai 2019 World Para Nordic Ski World Cup Sapporo in Hokkaido, as the title or the main sponsor. We hope that we could contribute to creating a better environment. Last week, we have sent a banner for those para-athletes who are to join the Beijing Paralympic games. The fourth activities is life planning, these activities started in 1994.

We have the so-called life-plan advisor certification system, LPA in short, this is our original qualification for CO-OP Kyosai members and staff nationwide. When they are certified, they can convey and share their knowledge about how to look at insurance, reviews the insurance, and address the household finance. The OPA has a knowledge very close to the financial planners. Today, there are more than 4,600 of certified people nationwide, of which 1,300 is quite active. The LPA can suggest the coverage suited for each member and also they organize workshops and study sessions. The LPA qualified members and staff can consult meetings so that they can create a place of learning together amongst members. More than 30,000 people join such workshops and study sessions each year, however, because of the pandemic in 2020, the participation was somewhat limited, but we resumed the activities in 2021 and the participation is rising.

There are many things to learn, they look at the coverage, the protection, the household finance, social security, education for children, and end of life planning, disaster prevention. And also, we are adding the health promotion as another subject for such learning experience. This is one concrete example. Miyagi is one of the regional cooperatives, Miyagi Co-op, the LPA group of Miyagi Co-op, held a study session at a local primary school, and it’s a simulation game, simulation in how to start up a business and earn money. Or students are given a certain capital and they purchase and sell products, if you don’t have enough money, they can borrow money from a financial situation. And the group that makes the most profit is the winner of this simulation game. They really enjoyed it. They were fascinated. So they enjoy and learn together with their friends and colleagues. And through such process, they learn more about money and earning money and also be a better planner for their life.

Now unfortunately, the pandemics have adversely affected such activities, but LPA members were not intimidated, they did not stop their efforts. Day after day, they were making every effort to resume such campaigns and activities. We have wonderful colleagues and peer who are working and they’re very motivated and very active. Another activity, this is the mutual support, the grant system in communities. This is in collaboration with the regional co-op and the local organizations. We provide financial assistance or grants. These are given to the activities that protect people’s livelihoods. Well in the past 10 years, 400 million yen was contributed. In March of 2022, we mark the 10th anniversary of this campaign, that’s the age of my little colleague, Cosuke, so it’s a milestone or landmark area and we would like to celebrate 10 years of effort in this area with some meaningful activities.

Another is activities that protect people’s livelihood and contribute to solving their problems. As you may know, we are a fast aging society, more than one of the household has a member that is more than 65 years old. And 60% of the household, the single household or just husband and wife. And we have to create better environment that is inductive for improving the livelihood of the senior citizens. And we have conducted many campaigns, including the cafeteria and the food drive. Another activity is protect people’s lives and enable them to live true to their themselves. So we provide employment support and also support other activities that improve their livelihood. The third is for women and children so that they can live lively and rewarding life. The children’s poverty is an issue, so children’s cafeterias and places for children to belong were created. We support the victims of the domestic violence as well.

There are many activities that cover more than one goal or one subject. This is the medical cooperative, the healthcare cooperative, this is human medical co-op Rainbow Farm, they called it Rainbow, but human medical co-op organizes farming. This is solution set up for enhancing the health of the senior citizens. Each person can make use of his or her own strengths and enjoy activities with friends leading to the prevention and together with the local kindergarten, they have such good experiences.

They have to feel that they’re truly a member of the community, that they belong to the community and the grants we’ll use to improve the infrastructure and tools to make it easier for everyone, even the seniors to work in such farms. In 2022, that will be the 11th year of our effort, we will continue to promote mutual support in communities, a collaboration between the regional cooperatives and the local organization, or renew some of the program, or we’d enhance their coverage by cooperative insurance. We expect a collaboration among different organizations, and we will share the thoughts that we can contribute for the better livelihood of every member of the community, I have talked about five activities in the local community, but that is not all, we have other programs, we support people when they’re ill and are injured, but of course, prevention of course leads the better happiness.

So we provide health improvement activities, regional cooperatives engage in such activities. And we support them as Kyosai. And also Kyosai supports people livelihoods, and when they’re troubled by illness or injury and encourage people to file claims when necessary. In conclusion, CO-OP Kyosai will continue to contribute to its policy holders and members, as well as to the local communities where they live, by expanding the circle of mutual aid and valuing partnership with local co-ops, we value the part of connections. Thank you very much for your kind attention.

Silvida Reyes Antiquera:

Good afternoon everyone. First of all, I’d like to say thank you to AOA for giving this opportunity, where we can share with you our initiatives in attaining the UN sustainable development goals. I’ll try to keep this presentation within the 20 minute time limit. So please bear with me if I go fast.

Let me start my presentation with a short background of the institution I represent, Kasagana-ka Mutual Benefit Association, or we call it KMBA. Kasagana-ka is an acronym for the Filipino phrase, which in English, it means livelihood for genuine self-reliance in which through time, continues to define our programs and our target clients. KMBA was registered with a securities and exchange commission in 2006, and it was granted the license to operate as an MBA by the insurance commission in 2007. As of now, as of December 2021, KMBA has 45,000 strong members. KMBA envisions a self reliant and self-sustaining mutual benefit association that actively and appropriately response to financial risk management, needs a poor Filipino families. It offers micro-insurance products and services that provide immediate financial assistance in times of dire needs. These are our products and services that responds to the most vulnerable moments of one’s life.

KMBA is one of the organizations forming the Kasagana-ka Synergizing Organization, or we commonly call it the KSO, along with Kasagana-ka Development Center. And the Kasagana-ka Employee Provident Fund, whose client beneficiaries and employees constitute primaries members of KMBA. Now KDCI is in charge of implementing the social programs. K-COOP lead in the financial products and services, using microfinance as a strategy. While KMB serves as the provider of social protection KEEPF and the provides support for the employees. Now, the synergistic relationship among the organizations is being adopted because it is in the realization that the goal of its Kasagana-ka organization is best achieved through cooperation between the organizations, meaning one cannot do it alone. We feel that to improve the life of one family cannot be achieved just by taking a livelihood loan from the K-COOP.

It is also imperative to address other aspects like health, resilience, housing, education, and security during unforeseen events. This can be provided to them with the help of the other KSO members, through this model, the success of one KSO, is the success of the whole. So it also provides the flexibility to respond to other social development goals, through access to wider networks and resources. KMBA being a provider of social protection, reflects its symbiotic relationship with its partner organizations, both are mutually dependent and mutually beneficial to each other, which leads to increase in resource efficiency for the organizations. There have been instances where members think twice when it comes to resigning from that cooperative, because it will entail termination of the KMBA insurance membership, which they value much.

Now the KSO has six program pillars, or this is a combined programs of the KSO, so one is the livelihood and enterprise development, two, is education training information, three health and wellness, security, shelter and safety, social protection, and the new and last is the environment resiliency and sustainability. The products and services are aligned with corresponding UNSDG. In the previous KSO strategic plans, the UNSDGs was first used as a reference point to identify the products and services, which response to a specific SDG. Out of the 17 goals, 12 were identified with environment and climate action still need to be worked on, but due to the pandemic, the review of the previous strategic plans came a year earlier. And the 2022-2027 strategic plans for each KSO was grafted. Part Of the culture of the Kasagana-ka is the presentation and the approval of the individual strategic plans to a joint session of all board and management within the KSO, from the original five program pillars. The 2022-2027 strategic plans will now focus on six program pillars with addition of environment resiliency and sustainability.

Let’s take a look at the first program pillar, which is livelihood and enterprise development. This is designed to help entrepreneurial women improve their quality of life by providing them access to credit for their small enterprises and enhance their capacities as entrepreneurs. It also increases opportunities for them towards job and income generation. Some of the financial products under this pillar, which is the business loan as an entry point to availing the products and services in K-COOP. Loan type for specific sector, like the person with disability is also made available. And we do have a loan type designed to address pre-employment expenses of family member and support loan to health provide a business affected by the pandemic. COVID-19 has taken a heavy toll on livelihood resulting in loss of income and job opportunities for most of our members. Subsidies were provided and has mobilized eatery owners, ambulant vegetable vendors for them to get back to their feet, help feed hunger until they get back to normal business.

K-COOP paved the way for the promotion of online marketplace of our members. This filler response to UN sustain development goal number one, which is no poverty, which is to help eradicate poverty through the access of credit for livelihood loans, revival of business, employment, and the implementation of projects targeting the vulnerable, urban poor communities, increasing resources and services, and supporting communities. It is also supporting goal number two, which is zero hunger, in aid to help decrease hunger, making sure that the vulnerable sectors, especially children have sufficient and nutritious food. Also, supporting goal number five, which is equality, ending discrimination against women is not only a basic human right. It is crucial for a sustainable future, it is proven that empowering women helps economic growth and development. Also, this pillar supports goal number eight, which is decent work and economic growth, by way of promoting sustained economic growth, encouraging

And the last, it supports goal number 10, which is reduced inequalities, the long history of colonialism has embedded a patriarchal culture among Filipinos, providing access for livelihood to urban poor women can be perceived as empowering lower income earners and promote economic inclusion for all. I will just show you some data on the number of families being served to address hunger during pandemic. So you have the Project Karinderya, we have the Project Kariton, and we have the Singkong Sabaw project.

Now for the second program pillar, which is education training and formation. To aid in all school related expenditures, we have the product called K-Education program, aims to develop empowered, efficient, and effective leaders, and managers and among employees, and members through trainings and formation programs. We call it the Kuya Jun Scholarship program, we provide financial assistance to qualified high school and college children of members. And another initiative is the Adopt-a-School Project, where each K-COOP satellite office identifies a school where most of the said members send their schooling children. So the school then identifies the project, like for example, drinking fountain water tank, electric fence among others, response to goal number four, which is quality education. This goal ensures that all boys and girls complete primary and secondary schooling, achieving inclusive and quality education for all, reaffirms the belief that education is one of the most powerful and proven vehicles for sustainable development. I will just show you some data on the project.

I’ll go now to program pillar number three, which is health and wellness. To promote health among the members and giving them to health services, educating employees and members on health related issues and encouraging health seeking behavior, ensures the sustainability of our institutions, members, families, and communities. So we have this loan window designed specifically for expenses related to laboratory tests, hospital confinement, eye glasses, dentures, medical procedure, and access to clean water through partnerships with Unilever, Period and Chile Water. So we also have a product intended for selected members who are interested also to undergo training on general wellness and good health habits. This particular pillar responds to goal number three, which is good health and wellbeing. To promote health and providing access to health services and create awareness is essential. Goal number six, clean water and sanitation by ensuring access to safe and affordable drinking water.

The next slide is the program pillar number four, security, shelter and safety. This response to goal number 11, which is sustainable cities and communities, by providing access to safe and building affordable, resilient housing. So improving the living conditions and attainment of safe, decent, sustainable shelter and communities for our members. This involves skills training with built change and project to Maseti partnership, with Kariton to Maseti Foundation. Safer homes and communities are achieved in better management of risks from natural and manmade disasters. Another loan product, we call it the K-Bahay for security of tenure of the members and their family. By having the proof of the ownership of the house and the land, by the way, all our products start with letter K, that stands for Kasagana-ka.

The next program pillar is social protection. Social protection is to protect the members and their families during vulnerable times. And this is where Kasagana-ka MBA is, the time of death, disease, sickness, disability, accidents, and disaster by providing them affordable insurance with efficient delivery of benefits and service. This particular pillar responds to number three, good health and wellbeing. Goal number 16, peace, justice, and strong institutions. These strong institutions should begin in the family, which is the basic unit of our society. Social protection is a human right and it should also be made available and affordable to low income earners. It provides support to the family in case something happens and it gives peace of mind and hope for a better future.

Now the last program pillar that I would like to discuss is the new one, which is the addition to our program pillar, which is the environment, resilience, and the sustainability. Now environment aims to respond to goal number seven, affordable and clean energy, access to solar power and ensuring energy for all is vital. So there are communities in the Philippines where access to energy is still a big concern. And we have an ongoing partnership with the Microfinance Council of the Philippines on the sustainable and energy efficient housing design. This particular pillar also respond to goal number nine, which is the industry, innovation, and infrastructure. Digitalization plays a major role in this area, which could result improvement, and assistance, and processes, paperless transactions, and saving the environment. We are geared towards this digital technology. It also supports sustainable development goal number 12, responsible consumption, and production.

Achieving economic growth and sustainable development requires that we urgently reduce our ecological footprint by changing the way we produce and consume goods and resources. The way we dispose waste, encouraging our members and institutions to practice recycling and the reduction of waste. Also, it support sustainable development goal number 13 on climate action. It is to strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related hazards and natural disasters. KDCI has initiated the hazard mapping and profiling among our members and included in their plan on awareness raising on climate change mitigation, impact reduction and early warning, we are now in communication with our members to slowly adapt and promote green products and services. Also, this supports goal number 14, which is life below water, paperless transactions and solutions to waste management could prevent and reduce marine pollution in particular from land-based activities. In addition and last, it support goal number 15, which is life on land. Partnerships to encourage organic farming and urban gardening will help support food and water security, climate change, mitigation and adaptation.

The next slide, which is the major strategies, goal number 17, partnerships for the goals. This is one of our major strategies, encourage and promote effective public, private, and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing of partnerships. It is the realization of KSO that we cannot do it by ourselves. And thus we enter and forge partnerships with like-minded organizations to help obtain our goals of serving the urban poor communities. In closing the UN sustainable development goals are major steps towards a better future to align, develop, and implement products and services is our own little contribution towards the attainment of the UN sustainable develop goals. The realization of the six program pillars by the year 2027 would allow us, the KSO, to put a check mark on all the UNSDGs. That’s all of my presentation. Thank you very much.

Mirai Chatterjee:

Namaste, greetings to all sisters and brothers in Japan and in other countries and greetings to my co-panelists. I’m very thankful to AOA, to invite us for this webinar, and sharing, and it has been as the third speaker, very interesting to hear my sisters from Japan and Philippines. And also that in very different contexts, we have come to some, I think, similar conclusions as you’ll see in a minute. So next, I’m going to transport you to the world of work, of the informal economy in India, because it is these poor struggling women of our country, who we believe need not only special attention, but it is they who are leading the long journey towards India’s reaching of the sustainable development goals.

As you all know, we are a large country and you can see that more than 500 million of our working people are in the informal economy. And if I speak of the female workforce, it’s more than 94%, there are women like my sister in the slide who is manufacturing, inland salt, toiling under the hot sun, doing this work manually and earning very modest to income. But together the informal economy, as you can see from the slide contributes more than 50% of India’s GDP growth. I thought for our audiences, which may not be so familiar with the informal economy, some characteristics may be in order, one and importantly, no work and income security, they are like my sisters in the slide, the first lady is rolling bidis or Indian cigarettes with tobacco in a special leaf, and it’s actually a very skilled activity to roll these, you can see in the slide. My colleagues, the members of SEWA, are like the women in the slide with very little work and income security. The first lady, as I said, is rolling Indian cigarettes and earns very little. And the second one is rolling incense sticks for a living. They are also characterized by no social security or very little social protection like insurance, sick leave, maternal leave and childcare. There are very few laws for informal workers and you might find this a bit strange because they’re the bulk of the Indian workforce, but I think it’s difficult even for governments to figure out what kinds of laws, policies, and regulations. And in countries of the global south, like India, enforcement of laws and regulations is always a challenge and it’s quite poor. And the major characteristic of the informal economy, which makes it particularly challenging to work with informal workers is that they are purely self-employed, most of them, they don’t have fixed employer, employee relations.

So even when we design insurance, even when we design social protection, there’s no question of getting collections from the employers because there are no employers simply. And then of course the other important point is that while these women are turning the engines of the Indian economy, they have no voice and visibility, they’re uncounted, under-counted, and undervalued. And only till recently, the census of India has begun actively trying to count these kind of workers. And then obviously, as you can expect, there’s an overlap between informality, poverty and gender, meaning that the poorest of informal are women and they are also living in poverty. And also, which is perhaps a peculiarity of Indian society and economy, is that most informal workers come from the most disadvantaged cast, as we call it, and communities like minorities. We have a hierarchical cast system in India, and some of you would know, and informal workers are the bottom or the lowest of that system, which is a very unfair system, which of course we are trying to abolish and overturn as a nation and as a country as well.

It’s because of this world of work, which is full of poor struggling informal workers, that we began the self-employed women’s association saver, SEWA. 50 years ago, this year we celebrate our 50 years. It was started in ’72 by Ela Bhatt, who is a lawyer and labor organizer. She herself was born into a family of freedom fighters and she was born in the days, the heady days of India’s freedom movement against colonialism. Silvida already mentioned the legacy of colonialism that some of our countries are still coming out of slowly, but she was fortunate to be born in those times of nation building when India was newly independent.

But as you can see with a handful of women workers, today, we have 2.1 million workers, of course, that’s still very small in a country of 1.3 billion, but it’s a start. And we are in 18 of India’s 29 states. And our member are like the women you see in the slide. The biggest category are manual laborers and service providers like farmers, small and marginal farmers, then street vendors, like the women, you see selling vegetables, then small produce, women who produce baskets or crafts, or rolling those incense sticks that you saw. And also home-based workers, women who produce goods and services while working out of the home, the home is their workplace or their factory.

Our movement our SEWA is in inspired by the values of Mahatma Gandhi, which many of you would familiar with, of course, truth and nonviolence, he’s known for that, the struggle of nonviolence struggle, but also inclusion, he urged us to keep the poorest and the weakest and the most vulnerable in this center of all our efforts, which I think all of us in our countries are doing, what I heard. He also urged us to be self-reliant and build the local economy, for self-reliant country, you need to start bottom up. So you first build self-reliant economies and communities, and then only you can dream of a self-reliant country. We began to organize women first through a trade union. We grew out of the labor movement, actually a labor movement, a union that was formed by Mahatma Gandhi himself, in the year 1917, when he returned from South Africa. But very quickly, we realized that if you want to organize very poor women and help them to emerge from poverty and towards self-reliance and the realization of their dreams of self-reliance.

Then the union model was not enough, the union model. And actually through a series of came upon the model of cooperatives. And we found that union and cooperatives are both democratic organizations, they’re transparent, they’re accountable to their members, their situations where in these organizations, where members are the users, managers, and owners of their own membership- based organizations. And of course they’re democratic, as we know, because all of us are in the cooperative movement. I’d like to tell a short incident over here, which actually illustrates how from union, we went to cooperatives, we began to organize agricultural labor in the villages, not far from Ahmedabad where we are located. And we had the labor department or the government come, we organized the workers for minimum wages, as we approached the landlords on lands these women and men were working. And by day we were able to give them minimum wages and we were very pleased about that.

And then at night, the same landlords went with their goons, there was violence and they took the money they gave the workers back. The workers had such low bargaining power, they had such few livelihood opportunities, that they were forced to return the money, which was actually theirs by right, to the owners. And it was then that we realized that if we want to help our people come out of poverty, injustice, and exploitation, then the cooperative model fitted very well with the union model. And we began to make farmers cooperatives and also dairy cooperatives and so on. So as you can see from the slide, we formed 150 women’s cooperatives and we have promoted more than 5,000 small, medium, and some quite large membership-based cooperatives.

These experiences then led us to our main goals. And you can see that the main goals also reflect the SDGs. We didn’t know it at the time because there were no SDGs at the time. But listening to our members, keeping them in the center as Mahatma Gandhi advised us. We Learned that their dream was for full employment, no hand should be without work and livelihood, because for these women and their families work and livelihood is the lifeline to survival. And as you can see, full employment is not just work and income security, it’s also full security and social security or social protection.

And social protection, as you can see or social security, in our experience, if women are to come out of poverty and move towards self-reliance, must have at least healthcare, insurance, childcare, housing and pension. And self-reliance is not simply financial sustainability, obviously profitability or surplus is critical for all of us in the cooperative movement, but it’s also having democratically elected boards where the poor women themselves, the working women themselves are the leaders. But also that these women have control over decision making and over their own organization.

So this is what actually brought us to insurance. And we are already members of ICMIF. And the way we came to insurance is through banking, because one of the first needs of women was financial services. And the women went to the mainstream banks, which were nationalized at the time in the ’70s, in the 1970s in India. And they asked to open bank accounts and to have access to services like loans. And the banker said, no, no, no, we cannot give loans to poor women, you will never pay us back, and you don’t save anyway, they didn’t believe that these women are poor, but are very good savers. Anyway, we formed our own cooperative bank, our first cooperative, in fact, worlds and India’s first women’s cooperative bank. And when we were doing banking and financial services with women, they said, what about insurance? Because they said, whatever we save goes during a disaster, either someone is sick or someone is lost a breadwinner like a husband, or there is a disaster, like an earthquake of flood. And we cannot come out of poverty and move towards self land.

That’s really how we got the idea of going into insurance, it was the women who said, please let us have insurance. And we went to the insurance companies, which in the 1970s and ’80s were also nationalized, and we knocked on their doors and like the bankers, the insurers said, no, no, no, we can’t ensure poor women, you are bad risk, you die too much, you get sick too much. And we said, that’s why we come to you, we need that risk cooling, we need that support. So I’m afraid it’s been a history of a lot of closed doors but the positive side is that it has forced us to invent our own systems and our own services.

And one such is the national insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative, of which I was a co-founder. As I told you, the history of starting was because no one else would ensure us, so we thought, why not to ensure ourselves like a mutual? So our insurance program began in 1992, and we provide bundled life and non-life products. I should mention here that we are an intermediary still, we do not have a license to be a full fledged insurer, because in India, unlike the Philippines and we’ve studied the Philippines model closely, unlike the Philippines and other countries, the capital requirement for being a full-fledged insurer is extremely high. It’s about 15 million US dollars just for entry license. So that’s another struggle we are engaged with, with our government. But in the meantime, we started our own work as an intermediary, which means that we were a link between the women and between the mainstream insurance companies offering different products to them.

And then as we went along and got some experience, we decided to register ourselves as a cooperative just about more than 10 years ago. And this is not only SEWA’s first national cooperative. It’s a multi-state cooperative under our laws, but it’s also India’s first, all women insurance cooperative, where women are the shareholders, the policyholders, and through women, the entire family is secured for life, accident, health, and also wage and income loss. Our work is still a work in progress. We are evolving, we have much more to do. We still have a small membership, small insured, it’s all voluntary insurance. And these products services and insurance education is all done by a team of dedicated grassroot women, also informal workers themselves. We call them Vimo Sathis, I should say that Vimo in our language means insurance, and VimoSEWA, is of course for the mother organization, Self-Employed Women Association, but SEWA and Sanskrit and all our Indian languages means service, so it has a double meaning.

So these Vimo Sathis, or insurance sisters, they not only provide education and market the products, but they themselves now get a livelihood from this, they were formally farmers or garment workers. Now some of them are full time Vimo Sathis, earning four to five times more than they did earlier. This is a little bit about our services, as you can see from the slide, our is a door-to-door approach, of course COVID didn’t allow us that, and we were forced to digitalize, which is of course a good thing, and now most of these services are digitalized. But I want to stress that the way we develop products, as I told you, we ourselves cannot carry the risk, because we don’t have a license to do so by our government. But we work with the large insurance companies, and in a consultative, bottom up manner, we develop products which are small and affordable to women, like you see in the picture. And then the Vimo Sathi, the insurance sister goes like this, house to house, providing the documents, doing the hand holding.

And most importantly insurance education. Because insurance is a concept that is not really known to middle class Indians much, we have a very low insurance penetration in India, even among the educated middle class, want to speak for informal women workers. So this has actually been one of our major investments. For many years, going like this, door to door, house to house, slowly bit by bit, joining women with insurance. Linking with mainstream insurance companies, I’ve already mentioned that, and we’ve had mixed experience to be honest in our partnership with the mainstream insurers. When I say mixed, it’s mainly because they don’t inhabit the world of informal women workers. So it’s very hard for them to imagine products with very small ticket size. Then selling of products, claims processing, and all of these now in the last two years, this is perhaps the only positive aspect of the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic, all of these are now digitalized and women use smartphones and WhatsApp for messaging and also for uploading documents and so on.

We have a good database now because we are more than 30 years old, so that database provides us a lot of useful information to develop people-based products. And I think very importantly, as has been mentioned by Silvida before me, it’s important to link with other aspects, insurance itself is not a complete answer to poverty and to the SDGs. So we link with SEWA Bank, which I’ve already mentioned, we link with our health cooperative, Lok Swasthya for primary healthcare. Then we link with our housing organization. So there are many organizations within the SEWA ecosystem, or the SEWA movement as we call it. And we actively work together in a synergistic coordinated way, much like my sister just explained, Silvida just explained.

A slide on our performance and impact. We are financially viable for the last 10 years, but I must be honest and say it was a struggle, a challenge. We are generating surplus and giving dividend to our members. And our growth is slow and organic, but I suppose we believe slow and steady. Although we are now in a phase of growth and scaling up to other states and importantly, even outside the SEWA movement, we have 25 new partner organizations. I think the pandemic has showed the importance of insurance, to others who are working on livelihood or health. And many of them are now ensuring with us. Concrete economic benefit through claims has reached these women. And of course in dollars it looks very modest. But in our money, in our Indian rupees, it’s quite substantial. And our members, many of them say it has helped keep head above water and keeping out of falling into poverty.

Importantly for us, the government of India came and studied our insurance work and our approach and has now developed a health insurance, India-wide health insurance program, unfortunately it’s not universal. It only covers, I think now 30 to 40% of informal workers, we’re pushing them to cover a hundred percent. But anyway, they came and studied our systems and incorporated, many of them a particular pleasure for us was the opportunity to depose and give our testimony and experience before the Indian parliament, the Indian parliament had a special committee on insurance, how to increase insurance penetration in India among all sections of society, including the poorest, and some of our insured members and our Vimo Sathis, the insurance sisters, actually had the thrill of test for members of parliament.

Finally, more recently, in fact, we finished our work just before the pandemic. We were able to produce a report at the request of the Indian insurance regulator, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. I was honored and privileged to serve as the chair of that committee upon their request. And we produced a report with recommendations as to how the Indian insurance sector can reach more and more poor struggling workers of the country. As I told you, the insurance penetration is extremely low in India. And one of our major recommendations has been the reduction of capital requirement from 15 million US dollars to about five million because we have showed through our evidence that it is possible that other countries like the Philippines and even the European Union and others have much less capital requirement, and maybe even Japan, I’m not sure what your capital requirement is.

But now in the last few slides, I’d like to come back to our discussion on SDGs, which was started by my sister co-panelists. I think our biggest experience has been that the challenge of countries like ours, which have progressed in the last 75 years since we became independent of the colonial power, the biggest challenge continues to be the reduction of poverty because without that kind of integrated approach that has been mentioned by others, and I’m going to speak to in a minute, it’s very difficult for people to come out of poverty and move towards self-reliance and reach the SDGs. And indeed, India as a country will not meet the SDG commitment as it has made, if we don’t focus in an integrated holistic manner.

We’ve also learned during the pandemic that this is critical, this holistic there’s no one magic bullet or one silver bullet, as we say, insurance itself has to be part of a larger ecosystem and a larger initiative and effort to address the ongoing issue of poverty and growing inequality in all of our countries. And I’m sorry to say that in my own country, the studies are showing that now about close to 50% of people have fallen into poverty during the pandemic and inequality has increased. We have some of the world’s richest people. And then we have people who hardly earn two US dollars per day. This is what Mahatma Gandhi on the called violence. He said, poverty is violence, it’s violence of a society on its own people. And it’s high time that we address this, if we are to reach the SDGs at all, and most importantly, to reach the poor and struggling people of our countries who are responsible for our growth and development.

As you can see, the first aspect, which is linked to our goal, is work in income security, others have also spoken to this, my co-panelists. And as I told you, we found that through union and cooperative self-help groups, village-based, community-based neighborhoods, women, like you see in the slide who are artisans, are struggling to make a living, can actually get some measure of work and come out of insecurity. I have two examples, one is the example of street vendors who are the earliest members of SEWA, they were harassed by the police and the municipal authorities who beat them, who took away their baskets where they were selling fruit and vegetables, and told them they were a traffic nuisance. We organized them into a union. We even had to go to the Supreme Court of India and we got a favorable judgment from the Supreme Court, saying that street bending is a legitimate livelihood activity.

After a 40 year struggle campaign, this has been one of our signature campaigns and not just in India, neighboring countries and across many countries. I’m happy to say the Indian parliament passed a law saying that street bending is a legitimate activity and street vendors should not be harassed by local municipal parties. And this is the first such law of street vendors in the world. And we were able to bring this in partnering with others, of course, through a joint strategy of organizing street vendors, into strong unions and cooperatives, and also working at the policy level. The other way,\ which I’ve already mentioned, where we have been trying to get work and income security to our members is through cooperatives. And we work in six sectors, including agriculture, dairy, artisan, like you see in the slide, services like childcare, healthcare, and then labor, like domestic work and cleaning. And finally savings and credit.

The next thing that we have been working on is food security, because we are still a country that suffers from hunger. One of the things we’ve been able to do is to work closely with our government’s food grain distribution centers, and women have been playing a leadership role in this. And we have set up what we call SEWA Shakti Kendra, literally empowerment centers. And these empowerment centers actually are hubs for information for learning. And it also helps the government people connect various schemes and services and programs with local woman. And one of the main plans of work of these empowerment centers has been to make sure that food actually reaches without corruption, without selling it here and there, as it is supposed to supposed to reach the hungry people of our country. I should also mention that we were very actively involved in bringing about a law, which is a national food security law, which passed the Indian parliament about 10 years ago, where the government is forced to give a guarantee to every citizen in this country for a minimum of food grains so that we don’t starvation and hunger.

The third pillar over there, which you can see is social security and social protection. I don’t have it up as a point, but in the slide you can see one of my saver sisters providing childcare to the children of informal workers. We have found childcare is absolutely critical if women are to join the workforce and work and come out of public and have peace of mind while we take care of their children and their children also grow healthily, they experience the joy of learning because their mothers and fathers are so busy trying to survive to make a living. So we take care of their children and ensure that they begin the learning journey. And then of course go on to school, college, or wherever.

We found during this pandemic that no one can do it all alone, our government tried what they could, but they couldn’t meet up and everybody saw what happened in India during the second wave, it was a terrible story of death and destruction and loss. And as a nation, we’re still emerging from that, of course, we had a milder third wave. But we understood that health education, health literacy, strengthening public health system is so critical and fortunately we have a health cooperative with a grassroot network and we were able to quickly combine our forces with the government and other NGOs and actually reach poor people at the grassroot level. And micro-insurance, I have already spoken about. So I’m going to stop here, I have two more slides with some of the lessons learned, which may be interesting for the audience.

My last two slides are on what we have learned all these years, and I think our biggest learning and perhaps it’s the same with all of you, is the importance of organizing, which is the process of bringing people together, uniting them, building the solidarity. And in our case, building the sisterhood. And through the women, through the sisters, communities are also brought together. And particularly those who are especially poor and vulnerable like women and like minorities in our country. And we have learned that this is the first and most vital step towards reaching SDGs. I mean, one of the major reasons people remain in poverty is because they are atomized, and particularly women, they remain atomized in their homes or in the words of our members, they say we are like frogs in a well, and only when we come out of the well, when we come together, when we see the outside world, can we begin to think of coming out of poverty and towards self-reliance.

But it’s not enough to just unite people, then we have to co-create with them, build their own membership-based organizations like cooperatives, so that we can in a sustained manner, work towards the SDGs. And of course, importantly, the sustainability of their own collective economic enterprise, like cooperatives, after all, it’s a business, it has to work, it has to make surplus, we have to give dividend to our members. Then governance is key, we’ve learned all these years that if people feel a sense of ownership, if they have voice and representation, there is democratic leadership and ownership, then these membership-based organizations and cooperatives really do well, they grow and they prosper. I’ve already stressed on the integrated approach to poverty reduction, there’s no one magic formula, but we need action on several fronts.

As you see in the fifth point, our experience points to what we call the four pillars, and these must reach women together, not one before the other, simultaneously, the first is capitalization, which means women getting access to financial services, asset bill building in women’s name, like land, machinery, buffalo, cows, whatever it is. Social protection, which we’ve spoken a lot about today. Capacity building to strengthen women’s leadership, to bring out their talents and skill, skill building. And also to make them strong managers of their own cooperative. And as I mentioned earlier, voice and representation. We’ve also learned that micro-insurance is a really critical aspect of poverty reduction, this is something we’ve been saying again and again to our state governments and our national governments. And this has now come to the fore, I think people have realized this during this pandemic. And especially micro-insurance is effective if it’s led by women and local people through their own organizations, community based or mutual insurance, and really it’s the role of government to facilitate and help us reach insurance to the citizens of our country.

We’re willing to work and partner with government and anybody else. Investing in universal healthcare because you can have insurance, but if you don’t have primary healthcare, if you don’t have universal social protection, including pension, then how can people ever come out of poverty? And we have to learn lessons from this pandemic, one of the major lessons is that women and women’s cooperatives play a critical role during these kind of crises and disasters, their family members said, do not go out of the home, it’s a risk to you, it’s a risk to the whole family. Still, these women went out, provided insurance, provided healthcare at great cost to themselves and their families. They’re brave and courageous.

Finally, an enabling environment, we find is essential. I already mentioned one, which is the need for reducing the capital requirement for micro-insurance in India. If you want cooperatives like ours, like VimoSEWA to reach the poorest. And with 30 years experience, we know now what works and what doesn’t work, we’ve learned from our mistakes, but the government must enable by reducing the capital requirement for a license. Then building partnerships as has been mentioned by other speakers as well as critical. No one can this alone, and again, this is a lesson that we all learned during the pandemic. Then it’s important to develop laws and implementation mechanisms that reach what we call in English, the last mile, the poorest, the most vulnerable, those who are normally forgotten.

So those kind of mechanisms and those can be developed in a consultative manner. Universal childcare, which I’ve already stressed, is critical for women’s economic empowerment and for our children. And then finally, what we have learned during this pandemic, how critical digitalization is, governments have to help with infrastructure, with help bridging the digital divide, we can’t do it alone. And put technology in the hands of women, women have enjoyed using technology, they have used it well to save lives during the pandemic. So we need to build on that and take it further. Thank you very much.

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