August 1, 2018 - Platform Coop - Meeting Notes IDRC/SEWA/Trebor

EWA has 106 member cooperatives. They include agriculture, vendors, services, childcare, construction, cleaning, savings cooperatives. 
Namya has been working there for a year.
The heart of SEWA is a trade union - 1.5 million members in 15 states. Working with government, employers, etc.

Generally there is good cell phone penetration but it is usually by household - the father or eldest son would have a phone and the woman might be able to check it once a day.

Three projects they are interested in pursuing with us.

Project 1:
Fledgling coop for beauty services in people’s houses. Women are being trained right now. This is an urban project and a lot of these women have phones. There is an existing platform that they know about: Urbanclap https://www.urbanclap.com/
A website for the beauty cooperative is required in December. It seems that right now they are expecting us to make this site. The site should eventually be the platform coop landing page.
A panic button that calls emergency services is particularly important.

Scheduling is also required

Project 2:
A governance tool for the whole federation of cooperatives. Social networking tools to connect all the coops. A way for them to make decisions together. A way to share educational materials particularly videos.
Some features should be usable with SMS - maybe messaging people to go check out updates.


Project 3:
An online market place.
Currently exploring amazon, etsy, and Indian versions of e-commerce. But 30% gets taken by those sites and SEWA tries to get 65% of the price to the artisans.

Trebor is currently talking to Open Society - interested in Saber and governance.
They have agreed to pay for a feasibility study I think in India and then might fund more work on the project.

3rd week September is ideal for our co-design visit - before the 28th when Namya will be in the US.