💡 The problem 💡

82% of India's working women are engaged in the informal working economy, including unpaid and irregular work.* The informal working sector include communities who have been subject to generations of systemic social and economic barriers to safe employment. 

🪔 Our mission and vision 🪔

We are an Australian social enterprise with a mission to remove the social and economic barriers to safe employment for women in India. Our vision is to sew and grow the seeds of equitable employment for women, to break the poverty cycle and leave no human behind. We prioritise impact in four ways - Education, Employment, Empowerment and Earth. You can read more about our Impact Journey here.

🌞 How we sustainably provide education and employment with women to break the poverty cycle? 🌞

1. We create a safe, inclusive and community-focused space at our centre, for learning and up-skilling so the women feel like work is their second home.

2. Through the employment we create with our global customers, we are able to pay the women dignified wages - 16 times** more than what they would be making in the unsafe informal economy. 

3. We prioritise daily moments of celebration and community building activities through afternoon chai time, weekly women's circles and monthly social activities.

4. We prioritise partnering with similar values-led social enterprises within the textiles sector through our supply chain where we can.

5. We organise free health checkups for the women and support their children's school fees so we can break cycles of intergenerational poverty.

🌱 Our Growth 🌱

• Our first seeds - Initially we spent time asking the women what would make their lives easier and more meaningful. They all said money, because money give them the 'freedom' and 'agency' to create a life that gives them joy. They all unanimously agreed on wanting to learn textiles and sewing skills but did not know where to go or have the money to learn - this is where our first seed was sewn.
• Testing employment models - We started in a small shed, offering women training in basic sewing skills and paid them for the time they were learning so there was no opportunity cost. In November 2023 we found a space for our own Sewing The Seeds centre. The centre is now women-led and run, and currently provides full-time employment to 8 women and casual gig economy employment to women working from home.
• Testing product and customer channels - The more products we have to make, the more employment we can create for women. This is why our focus has been to make ethical and handmade wholesale products for other organisations and brands. The last few years of working with global customers such as Daughters of India, Shakti.ism on wholesale products such as tote bags, lanyards, homeware and accessories, gave us the opportunity to strengthen relationships with an international market and finess our sewing skills. As we have up-skilled over time, the range of products we can make has also diversified, which now includes making fashion products for customers/ brands in slow-fashion such as Banai the label.

🪷 Our Ask 🪷

Our incredible wholesale customers are the reason we are able to provide sustainable employment and we are really grateful to each one of them. It has been an honour to watch their brands grow through the products we have made for them and this is something we will always continue doing.

Being inspired by our wholesale customers, we now have BIG dreams of creating our very own retail slow fashion clothing brand and maybe even bumping into you wearing one of our pieces. We would love your support in making this dream a reality which is why our ask is to support this campaign as we hope to raise $15,000 to create our first Sewing the Seeds fashion label.

The $15,000 will support us to:
- Engage with a local female textiles trainer to educate the women in our centre to make patterns for different sizes and feel more confident in designing and making fashion apparel. This will cost us around $6500
- Purchase artisanal fabrics from weavers to make our first fashion collection. There is a minimum order quantity (MOQ) we need to purchase to make this worthwhile which will cost around $2000.
- Pay the women for the time it will take to make the products. This will cost around $5000
- Logistics to get the products into your hands. This will cost around $1500.

For our stretch target, we would love your support in raising $25,000 to enable us to:
- Investigate and purchase carbon credits to offset the carbon footprint through our logistics 
- Investigate and purchase artisanal fabric from more women weavers 
- Test more fashion designs and bring them to you

🧡 Why back us? 🧡

We are team of social entrepreneurs and incredible women in India and Australia.

Gayle has had 10+ years working and volunteering in remote parts of India. She has also been an art teacher for 20+ years in Melbourne and is passionate about Indian textiles and its history in sustainability. 
Sakshi is an Indian woman and migrant to Australia. She has experience working in Finance at EY, has had board experience, startup experience and worked in supporting migrants and refugees in entrepreneurship in Australia.
Roja is also an Indian woman and our operations whizz. She has an extensive background in International development, and is passionate about creating sustainable solutions through social entrepreneurship. 
Ritika lives in Pondicherry and is loved by all the women at the centre. She has completed her CPA and has worked in government, corporate and other not-for-profits focusing on sustainability and women across India.

And together we make a loyal, resilient, witty and committed leadership team in manifesting our mission to create systemic change through safe employment for women in India.

All our designs and products are handmade using eco-friendly, up-cycled materials and traditional techniques specific to India where possible.

🌻 In addition to our rewards, we also welcome tax deductible donations as we are a DGR registered charity. If you want to know more or would like to donate, you can reach out to us at hello@sewingtheseeds.org and we can send through a tax receipt.

Check out our website where you can also subscribe to our newsletter - www.sewingtheseeds.org

Follow us on Instagram - @sewingtheseedsorg

We also want to give a huge shoutout to @flutesiva for his beautiful rendition of ‘Naan Pizhai’ composed by Anirudh Ravichandar which we used as our background music for this video. 

Footnotes

* http://164.52.210.154:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1615/1/16158181Women-in-the-Indian-Informal-Economy-Brief_-_IWWAGE_compressed.pdf

**https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/PublicationsView.aspx?id=19887