Livelihoods
Home-based workers enter into the global supply chain at the bottom, doing beading work through contractors and sub-contractors. Although their embellishment work adds great value to the garments, they are not paid its worth. SEWA Delhi is promoting ethical and transparent supply chains through a women’s owned producer company, Ruaab SEWA, and its couture line, Loom Mool.
Achievements
- International supplier to major companies including Monsoon, Marks and Spencers, GAP, and NEXT
- 750 poor women shareholders in Ruaab SEWA
Main livelihoods activities:
Ethical and transparent supply chains
In 2006, SEWA Delhi opened two embroidery centers in Sunder Nagari and Rajiv Nagar. This women-led model of garment production shortens the supply chain of ready-made garments by eliminating middlemen and promoting ethical and transparent sourcing.
Now, SEWA Bharat is promoting Ruaab SEWA, a women’s owned producer company, and Loom Mool, an ethical fashion brand, that bring economic opportunities to home-based worker members.
Training for women workers
In addition to an exploitative supply chain, women workers struggle in poverty because of lack of education, formal training, proper equipment, and awareness of the outside world. SEWA Delhi is engages Ruaab SEWA women workers in legal awareness, technical skill development, and skill building in order to build their capacities to speak out against exploitative working conditions and be economically independent.
Ruaab SEWA
SEWA Bharat, the parent foundation of SEWA Delhi, supported the formation of a Delhi-based producer company named Ruaab SEWA Artisans Producer Company Limited that comes under Part IXA of the Company Act of 1956. This company has been built as a true business with the exclusive objective of providing regular work to home based workers.
See Ruaab SEWA page.
Loom Mool
Started in 2013, Loom Mool is a boutique brand that promotes a unique ethical model of transparent garment sourcing and production by linking SEWA producer cooperatives and groups from around the country including SEWA Bhagalpur silk weavers, madhubani and khadi designers (Bihar), Ruaab SEWA embroidery workers, recycled paper product producers (SEWA Kerala), tie-and-dye work members from Jodhpur, and kanthan work by women members in West Bengal.
- High profile visitors including: Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Daniela Schadt, German President’s wife; Sharon Johnston, wife of Governor General of Canada and Brenda Beck, wife of Canada’s High Commissioner to India
- Vetted on Delhi’s popular culture blogs: Little Black Book Delhi, Brown Paper Bag, and TSD Magazine
- Featured in numerous news articles including: The Daily Mail, New Indian Express, The Business Standard
See the Loom Mool Facebook for updates or the Loom Mool website to order products from the newest line.
