MEMBERS:
EMA is a registered society formed by seven registered co-operative societies of 234 craftspersons and nine individual social activists in 1977.
At present EMA has the following members:
- Corporate Members (registered bodies of crafts persons, small farmers or crafts families) - 42
- Individual Members and Founder Members- 6
- Staff Members (Employees who have worked for more than two years in EMA ) - 23
These Members together constitute our General Body. Those from under-privileged socio-economic sections of our society “own” and manage our resources. Therefore, all our activities (interest-free loans for production, purchase of machines and work-sheds, designing, raw materials procurement, tax advice, marketing etc.) are designed for and with the people who “own” our organization.
OBJECTIVES AND GOALS
We believe that unless a person has a minimum and secure income, he/she is unable to think in a historical dimension i.e. analyse the past and the present and to participate in a process of change for the future. We simultaneously believe, that the assurance of a minimum income and a minimum security enables persons to successfully establish for herself/himself a more just place in society. Our goal is to enable people to obtain minimum incomes and securities that they are able to transform the socio-economic structures that exploit them and all our activities are geared to this end.
FINANCE
- Extension of interest-free credits to our Corporate Body Members, are given from our Revolving Credit Fund. The fund is increased every year by way of donations from those who share our goals and by profits generated by our income generating activities.
- Income-generating activities include product design, advice on quality, training in production and management skills, raw materials procurement, packaging and marketing of the products of our producer groups. All the above activities are financed by our marketing activities.
MARKETING POLICIES
Marketing of the products of our Corporate Members and our Production Units is done in two ways :
- Domestic Market : Each Member is responsible for selling its own products in India. However, EMA, in way of financial and technical support, does try to help its Corporate Members whenever so requested by them. The Sales achieved by our Members through their own efforts amount to nearly thrice that of EMA’s turnover. Recently, it has been decided by the General Body that EMA should try its hand also in the domestic market for its own production units and for those members whose goods are not “in fashion” in the export market.
- Export Market : Operation in the export market requires activities like-special designs to suit foreign tastes, special packaging for transport by Sea/Air, quality control, customs formalities on the basis of Indian laws and laws of importing countries, International Banking, Sales promotion by visits to overseas buyers and from overseas buyers etc. In 1977, our Corporate members believed that the most economic way to carry out the above activities would be to establish a central organization and therefore they founded EMA with the limited objective of selling 25% of the production of each Corporate Member in overseas markets.
PRODUCTION UNITS
At the time of our birth, the coop movement had assigned to us the role of acting as an export arm of the “ Industrial Co-operatives “ in West Bengal. The Industrial Co-operatives who became our Members, laid down rigid guidelines, which prohibited us from engaging directly in production activities.
However, some years ago due to several external and internal factors EMA has had to take up production activities too. We established our Textile Production Unit, Musical Instruments Unit, Leather Unit and a Candles and Incense sticks units, which is solely run by the physically challenged.
EMA AND EKTA TRUST
EMA’s sister organization Ekta Trust is responsible for addressing other social and environmental issues as follows :
- The Trust has established an action research project on the manufacture and popularization of cooking, heating and other devices to make the best use of Solar Energy. The trust is also testing such devices for our Textile Unit which needs gallons of hot water everyday.
- The trust is doing a lot of research in theory as well as practice in bio-organic farming in a very small scale in our Development Centre, which is located in a fruit and vegetable growing area and therby trying to set an example to local farmers.
- Ekta Trust hopes to plant ten thousand trees per year with the help of the youth clubs in South Kolkata.
- The Trust has initiated the Ekta Education Grants, whereby school students coming from economically weak backgrounds are given annual stipends ( 36 students ) and books ( 110 students ).
- The Ekta Self-Help Grants have assisted several young people to learn a profession
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