Unnoticed Ideas: Transforming the Life
If someone had asked me about my dream before 3 years, I would have said 8 hours work, tasty food and good clothes for my family. Life was so tough, everyday my husband and me used to wake up with the sound of the rooster and crow and spend the whole day for labor work in the village and town. Both of us could hardly see our daughters in daytime. We have gone through the huge struggle in our life just to fulfill the basic needs. Mausami Upreaty, 35 years old mother of two grown daughters, remembered all those tough days of her life. She and her husband used to think that the physical labor is the only source of their family income.
Mausami, lives in Hariwon Municipality, the foothill of the Chure mountain of Nepal, possess only 135 square meter land which does not supply food even for a month. In addition to address hand to mouth problem, they need to cover cost for two daughters’ education, medicines, clothes and celebration of festivals. Use of mobile phone, radio and television remained dream for them as their income from labor job hardly cover basic livelihoods cost.
“The Bee keeping has brought magical changes in our lives. we don’t need to do so much physical work for bee keeping, now the life is really becoming easier” says Mr. Wakil Mainali the husband of Mausami. He further says most of our dreams have been turned to reality with these 3 years.
Six years back, Mausami grab an opportunity to become a member of Bishnupur Women Community Forest executive members where she played active role using her spare time from daily routine. During the meeting, committee used to discuss issues related to forest management, community development and various ways of income generation at local level. This has opened her eyes to diversify their income sources.
Within their land, Mausami and her husband jointly decided to drop traditional cereal crop cultivation and started vegetable cultivation which is lucrative cash crop for them. The other members help her providing technology and market information. Good financial return from vegetable farming further inspired them to look into more income generation opportunities as she received annually in an average of 300 $ from the sale of vegetables. They decided to go on goat farming for which they received soft loan from their user group fund. They were highly success in goat farming from where they could generate some extra income annually.
Though, RECOFTC had been supporting this FUG on women leadership development activities since 2013, in 2016, RECOFTC provided further opportunities to diverse their sources of income through inputs subsidies and business management capacity building. Under this, Mausami received vegetables seeds, six bee hives along with frame and technical training on vegetable cultivation and bee keeping.
Ms. Mausami says “bee keeping has been miracle of our life. We harvest honey in an average 5 times a year where we receive at least 300.00 $ from the sale. There is scope of increase production as we have record of 18 kg harvest from a hive annually”. Within a year they could payback their loan and now from these three enterprises, they earn good amount of money. Both husband and wife are fully engaged in their business.
"Mausami family has been exemplary in this area. Their devotion and motivation to change their life has been recognized by various groups and even local government. Small support and wise decision could transform the life of a family" says vice chair of the Municipality Mr. Renuka Poudel.