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The
Rise of Rasheda Begum
Rasheda Begum is a TTBA
(Trained Traditional Birth Attendant) of BEES. She studied up to SSC and is
married to Rafiqul Islam who studied up to class eight. They got married in
1988 and now have three children. Rasheda’s first child is a boy reading in
class three. The rest two are girls studying in class two and one
respectively.
Rasheda lives in
Gokulnagar village in Raipura upazila under Narsingdi district. She got the
conception of group formation and thus income generation activities of BEES
first in 1997, and then is motivated by the Samiti of Gokulnagar,
Dakhsminpara. Later in the same year she became enlisted in the ‘Gokulnagar
Mohila Samiti’ with the help of the Field Officer Abed Mian. While
becoming a member she got her husband’s consent. Rasheda’s financial
condition began to change when she became a member of the samiti.
Being a member she took
loan for five times and received a total of Tk. 26,000 as credit from the
BEES group. For the first two terms Rasheda deposited Tk. 10 per week and
thence she has been depositing Tk. 20 as her weekly savings. Rasheda’s
husband is a farmer and they have a vestibule of paddy and rice. She bought
a cow from the amount of that credit money and invested the rest of the
money in their rice business. Though the business is not new, their capital
was too small to run that business. Now they have a capital of Tk. 20,000.
She has become able to make profit by that amount of capital. Both she and
her husband work in their terrace (vestibule). Her husband cultivates millet
in their own land.
They have a piece of
land of about thirty-three decimals. From this land they get two crops a
year, rice and vegetables. Her husband purchases paddy from Narayanpur and
Bhoirab Bazar of Kishoreganj district. But, to sell the rice and the
vegetables they produce, they do not have to go to the market. They consume
some crops from what remains after selling. Rasheda winnows the husk and
feeds her cows with those husks. She gets milk from a cow. They consume some
of the milk and sell the rest. Before being a member they had no cow, but
now they have two cows and a calf. They have eight hens and they get four
eggs from them daily. She gets Tk. 84 in a month selling chickens and Tk.
1,800 from milk.
Tk. 3,200 as monthly
income could not provide the basic needs of Rasheda’s family. BEES paved the
way to a solvent life for her. Now she is happy with the monthly income of
Tk. 7,184. She can now spend up to Tk. 4,510 per month, while earlier she
spent Tk. 3,020 in a month. Rasheda is used to with the savings habit. She
has now a savings of Tk. 3,200 in the BEES group. Two weeks back she took a
loan of Tk. 500 from her group savings.
MONTHLY INCOME
|
Sources of Income |
Previous |
Present |
|
Business |
0 |
1884 |
|
Agricultural Sector |
3200 |
5000 |
|
Services |
0 |
300 |
|
Total |
3200 |
7184 |
MONTHLY EXPENDITURE
|
Head of Expenditure
|
Previous |
Present |
|
Food |
2200 |
2550 |
|
Cloth |
170 |
275 |
|
Health |
200 |
250 |
|
Education |
0 |
450 |
|
Entertainment & Others |
450 |
985 |
|
Total |
3020 |
4510 |
Being a member of the
BEES group, she built a bedroom and a shed for her cows from the profit of
her business. She also bought a tubewell with Tk. 1,500. They have no
sanitary latrine but hope for one.
Rasheda achieves a
positive change both in family and social status. Rasheda acknowledges her
change to BEES, the overall development program of BEES bestowing her with
awareness on many vital issues. In course of her involvement in BEES Samiti
Rasheda has received awareness on education, gender, women empowerment,
environment, health, hygiene, etc. Alongside her economic upliftment,
Rasheda’s awareness has transformed her into the now important person she
is. Neighboring women come to her to get some opinions in different
problems. She has been facilitated a lot by the education class of the
Samiti. Moreover, she has got training on TBA (Traditional Birth Attendance)
in the unit office of BEES at Narayanpur. As a TTBA Rasheda is honored in
her community and also able to earn some extra income. She has got renounce
in her locality and is used to do advocacy for social mobilization. Her
husband is a very polite man. He is an open minded man and very cooperative
while she is taking any decision.
However, Rasheda
Begum’s story is of one who has won over the limitations and barriers
bestowed upon her by poverty and backwardness. The empowering light shown by
BEES and its poverty alleviation drive has enabled Rasheda to establish
herself in life.
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Gifted with a New-found Hope
“Those were the days of
despair, of hunger, of humiliation while the winner was poverty, shattering
our lives to pieces. Poverty told upon us both mentally and physically. I
didn’t have the capacity even to think healthy, not to mention my physical
ill-health. Because it was only the concern how to keep us alive, how to get
going at least with three meals a day, which, of course was not so easy to
manage. And we had to go starving on a number of instances. Our only means
of living was small business which was hardly profitable due to small
investment. As a result, our life was miserable in our efforts to fight back
poverty”, Morzina Khatun narrates her story.
Mst. Morzina Khatun
from Tarafmeru
village of Gabtoli upazila, Bogra is an identical woman of million other
destitute women of rural Bangladesh, living below poverty line. These
hapless groups, of whom Morzina is a representative, form the majority of
our population. Morzina’s family consist of five members- Morzina, her
husband, two sons and a daughter. Indigence was their constant companion.
Morzina’s sons were suffering from malnutrition as she could not give them
nutritious food. Overpowered by extreme needs Morzina felt very keenly for a
means to change their luck and was in search of a way forward. In the midst
of her desperate quest Morzina’s luck was really to turn as if with the
golden touch of King Midas.
It was back in 1995-96
when the turning point came to Morzina’s life. Morzina recalls, “An ‘apa’
from BEES (a female extension worker) came to our village and talked to us.
She explained the different activities of BEES and its goal to develop the
lives of the poor and destitute. She explained BEES’ credit program. We
found it very much convincing for us to get involved into the program, be a
part of it for the sake of our overall development.”
Motivated by the BEES’
principle, Morzina along with some other poor women of her village formed a
group with the assistance of an Extension Worker of BEES and named their
group ‘Tarafmeru Mohila Samiti’. The group activities have changed Morzina’s
life utterly. Firstly, with the financial assistance, secondly with
awareness and empowerment on many issues. She received her first loan of Tk.
2,000 for business capital and gradually received more loans of an increased
amount through the years for a diversified purposes. The loans helped her
explore ways of better living. Morzina received Tk. 4,000 the following year
and bought a cow. Utilizing the profits from her investments alongwith more
loans, now Morzina has 2 ‘bighas’ (66 decimals) of agricultural land of her
own while she has also leased 1 ‘bigha’ of land. They are growing multiple
crops in the land applying scientific methods of farming. BEES’ assistance
in this regard has helped Morzina a lot with good quality seeds, fertilizer
and so on. Besides Morzina has also been rearing cattle and goats. Now she
has two cows and three goats. She is getting vaccination facilities from
BEES. While there was only one room for the whole family, now they have been
able to build three more tin rooms. Morzina’s house has also become
sanitized, there is a ‘pucca’ sanitary latrine at the house. The credit goes
to BEES’ sanitation programme. The motivation and awareness raising
initiatives have empowered Morzina to a great extent. She has become very
much conscious of her gender role, that she is not meant to hold a
subordinate position either in family or in society, that she has the same
power, same rights a man has. She has become aware on many other basic
issues as well, i.e. health, education, nutrition, environment, cleanliness
and so on. Her younger son and daughter are reading in class seven and class
two respectively. Her eldest son has the education level of class seven who
is now a garments worker at Dhaka. She alongwith
her family members is having health services from qualified doctors as well
as nutritional needs have also been fulfilled due to her awareness and also
because of growing vegetables, fruits etc. at her homestead.
The family budget has
become expanded due to higher income. From her diversified income generating
activities, i.e. agriculture, business, livestock and other sources, her
monthly income has reached above Tk. 5,000 from her previous income of Tk.
1,500. As a result she can now spend above Tk. 4,000 for her family per
month against the previous expenditure of Tk. 1,500. While the previous
income could not fulfill all the family needs, now she can even manage some
savings after a decent life.
Morzina feels ever
grateful to BEES for her development, “Although people’s fate is in the
hands of God, but for me the driving force is BEES’ extended assistance.
While I was as insignificant as dust in the eyes of society now I have been
respected by others. I feel my position has become reinforced both in family
and society. And it is due to the upliftment and the new insight I have
become gifted with by the help of BEES and my endeavor.”
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