| |
| Case Stories |
 |
Fighting Poverty with hard work and determination: The story of Jayakala
Mrs Jayakala was having extreme difficulty in getting her ends meet. A resident of Sukumbasi tole in Birendranagar municipality, Jayakala was a perfect example of destitution and poverty. Lured by apparent prospect of relatively better life compared to impoverished Dailekh, Jayakala migrated to Birendranagar with 5 members of her family including 3 children aged 3,8 and 11. Whatever ancestral property the family had was sacrificed to sustain alcoholic way of life of her husband. Having forced to subsist on 0.02ha of land provided by the government for the landless in 1994, the family of Jayakala was on the verge of starvation. Driven by the urgency to find more sustained way of eking out a living, Jayakala borrowed Rs. 40 from her neighbour and added another Rs 50 from her own meagre savings to start a small retail business of vegetables. Due to very low investment made, she could not generate enough profit that could make any substantial change in her desperate situation. Then things changed.
During one of the Community mobilisation meetings conducted by RUP-Programme, she came to know about RUPP's approaches to poverty alleviation and became extremely interested in exploring the opportunities of availing credit and training support offered by the programme. She formed and led a team of five to form an enterprise in vegetable retailing under the purview if rural-urban linkage initiatives. Her hard work and enthusiasm coupled with integrated support from RUPP has now shown impressive results. An active participant of Enterprise management training programme, Jayakala has developed supply linkages with vegetable producers of neighbouring VDC's as well as suppliers located as far as Nepalgunj. She is currently earning Rs. 3,000 a month and has also been able to replace part of her roof with galvanized sheets. All of her children go to school now which they had discontinue owing to very poor economic condition. Jayakala boasts of a personal saving of Rs. 4500 in addition to her ability to contribute Rs 100 per month into the monthly saving scheme of Tole organisation of which she is member. All partners of her enterprise have experienced similar financial gains over the months.
We believe that there are many Jayakalas waiting for their potentials and enthusiasm to be tapped thereby enabling them to ensure sustained livelihood and proper schooling of their children. This has been the driving force behind all our endeavours aimed at intensifying our community mobilisation activities.
|
