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Realising cultural and social settings, empowerment of women in the context of the South Asia cannot be considered as an easy task by any means. Moreover, empowerment of Muslim women, in particular, belonging to the traditional and conservative setting of Butcher Tole of Nepalgunj was considered as a Herculean task even a couple of years ago. Even a short while back, the female members, not to mention of housewives, of the Muslim community of Butcher Tole were equally not treated by other members of their family. Women, at that time, were not even allowed to step outside their houses. This was the real situation when RUPP started its community mobilization. Contrary to the situation of the past, the entire Butcher community, even its male members, are now, of the opinion that women must not spare their lives within their houses but should be engaged in income generation activities. Emancipation of women is the need of the hour ¾ a common attitude prevailing in the entire community. This change in situation is largely due to community mobilization process of the RUPP.
Now the same TLO is operating very well as the number of its members rose from 7 (when it was formed) to 27 (now). They also running their own saving scheme with the saving of NRs. 10 per week. Till now they have accumulated Rs. 13,350 from the saving. The money collected from the saving has been given in credits to 4 TLOs member. With those credits, two of them have started meat business and the rest two have utilised the credits for schooling of their kids. Similarly, with an active support from the TLO, five of their members have received their citizenship. Ms. Matoom Khuresi, aged 42, now chair of Butcher TLO, was married at the age of 13 to Mr. Ali Husain, used to have very difficult time to maintain her family of 8 members. Though her husband was a butcher and doing a business of meat, he used to lose most of his income in gambling. Such was her desperate situation. Then one fine day, she came to know that RUPP could provide her with credit without any physical collateral. She then decided to take the credit and formed group of five - 4 female and 1 male member from the butcher community- for the sake of social collateral (one of pre-requisite for credit). Then, she faced another problem as most of the female members of the group did not have citizenship - A copy of citizenship is a mandatory requirement for the RUPP credit. Prior to this, female members of Muslim Community are of the opinion that citizenship of their husbands is more than enough and women do not need to have their citizenship. Then came another breakthrough, in order to make their citizenship, the female members of the group had to venture out of their houses and visit the District Administration Office regularly for a month or so. Which in itself was a revolution -as the Muslim women had never stepped outside their houses - and pave a way of freedom for them to venture out of their houses. Another value-added output of this is that they all are now with their citizenships. After receiving this credit, she started a meat business. With the profit from this business, she is not only paying her debt but also maintaining some saving. More than that, learning lesson from Ms. Khuresi’s success, a second group of women made their citizenship and applied for the credit. Now there are three such credit groups in Butcher Tole doing various trading like goat trading, leather trading etc. Yet another fruit yielded from the success of community mobilising process at Butcher Tole. Butcher TLO identified lack of toilet as a top priority problem and mobilised a sum of Rs. One hundred and twenty thousand from RUPP (Rs. 30, 000), Ward office (Rs. 40,000) and TlO (Rs. 50, 000) for the purpose of toilet building. Thus, the women of Muslim community, who never had stepped out of their houses and even never realised the need of citizenship, has seen a reverse of the situation as they are not only making their own incomes on their own but also developing their tole / community on their own. This success story is an example of success of community mobilisation process in the case of empowerment of woman for her dignified life. There are numbers of achievement of RUPP’s urban community mobilization process in the field of enterprise development, prevention of HIV/AIDS and poverty reduction. |
When RUPP started to form TLOs and when the Community Mobilizors (CM) went to the Butcher community, the people of the community shut their door to the idea of forming a TLO. Only after a long continued effort, the women of that community showed their interest and formed a TLO at Butcher Tole. But not even passing one month of the TLO formation, the TLO collapsed as the male members of the community protested against the TLO and even threatened to divorce (talaak) their wives if they continue to be the member of the TLO. But it took some efforts to convince them about the objectives of TLOs and its advantages. 