Ms. Malati Chaudhary, 25, lives at Thapapur-7, Nawalpur Kailali with her four family members’ at small hut. She has a small piece of land only two Kattha. She used to work as agriculture labour at landlords farm to solve her daily needs and two children’s education. She has no any academic education but her literacy made through informal education. Sometimes she used to work as unskilled labour at house construction works also.
In 2012, Digo Bikas Samaj, local implementing partner of LWF Nepal, launched Nepal Development Program in her settlement. At the beginning, she has taken membership of group namely Naya Dagar Woman Group. In the same time, she participated at Empowerment Education Program (EEP). Because of EEP classes the Group members learnt to raise their voices against social issues, domestic violence and issues on accessing government services. Now, she is also shareholders of Diya Aur Batti Saving and Credit Cooperatives of Thapapur VDC registered by them with the project support.
Project staffs encouraged her to create self employment. Based on the counseling, she along with other members received entrepreneurship skill development training (Start and Improve Your Business Package – 5 days) in 2014. During the course of training, she selected snacks mobile shop as her micro-enterprise and prepared her business plan accordingly. The project partially supported her to buy push cart enterprise including technical training, record keeping and materials as start-up supports whereas she also invested NPR 5,000 (taken loan from local cooperative) for daily raw materials purchasing. She started this enterprise from October 2014 in the local market center nearby Saraswati Higher Secondary School. Though, her husband has running small tailoring enterprise but fetching less income whereas he is also contributing in her business. Now, she is earning NPR 1,000 (Euro 8) per day in average. Within six month, she earned net profit of NPR 103,640 (Euro 942). She is exciting to see good income in short period and planned to diversify delicious fast food items.
Now, she has increased her saving amount in respective group and cooperatives and deliberately continuing her own enterprise. She gave thanks to LWF Nepal and Digo Bikas Samaj Bhajani for bringing such big changes in her life.