“I believe success must appear as a consequence of hard work. Myself is an example of this. Earlier I used to work at other people’s land and earn a very poor living. My earning was inadequate to run my family. Currently, my hard work paved the way to success. I rear cows and goats, and also try to earn from different endeavors. I have not left any stone unturned. I now meet all my basic family needs. I happily live with my two daughters”, Lucky Begum, one of the project participants expressed her while the staff discussed with her.
Thirty- three years old Lucky Akter lives in Lalchandrapur village. This village is located in Ranipukur union under Mithapukur sub-district. It is 12 km away from the sub-district headquarters. Lucky was born in a poor family. Like other poor parents her parents married Lucky off at a very early age. She was married off to Lalu Mia (39) of the same village in 2002. Lalu Mia was a day labourer and he did not have any arable land of his own except a tiny piece of land where he had his small house. Being a day labourer, he could not meet the basic needs of his family. Additionally, he had a bohemian attitude and didn’t want to take any kind of responsibility to run the family. Soon after a few months of marriage, he was found very reluctant to go for work. As a result, the family fell into trouble to meet the daily needs. Finding no other options, Lucky Begum started to work as domestic help to run the family. Although Lulu Mia had no contribution in family maintenance, however, he compelled Lucky to give him money. There was no peace in family as fighting was a regular event. Under such circumstances, a year after the marriage, Lucky Begum gave birth to twin girls. This created another tension as her husband was not happy seeing the girls. One day, he left the responsibility of the family and went away. Lucky Begum was completely devastated. She had no choice but to return to her parents. She started to work in another house as a helping hand again. She had been taking care of her two daughters and desired to raise them up as educated persons. Her father helped her a lot to take care of her daughters and run the family. To educate the daughters with formal academic education, Lucky Begum enrolled them in a school. Her ultimate goal was to provide them good education to her daughters so that the girls would have been able to work as service holders in the future. Lucky Begum states, “No matter how hard it is, I will try my best to ensure quality education to my daughters to establish them in the society so that they would be valued and respected”. However, the hard-luck woman didn’t have enough source to raise her income to run the family and cover the educational costs as well.
While Lucky Begum was searching for an alternative, she heard about the project of Islamic Relief and communicated with the project staff. Following the pre-determined criteria her daughter Kakali (11) was selected as the prime rightsholders and subsequently Luck begum being the mother of Kakali was chosen as other right holder and subsequently enrolled as member of local SHG – Lalchanrapur. After the nomination Lucky Begum started participating in the SHGs meeting and learnt the process of depositing the savings; borrowing interest free loan from SHG etc. Once the project staff conducted an in-depth interview (IDI) to identify the suitable business for her family, she disclosed her desire of cattle rearing. Assessing the feasibility as well as Lucky’s interest, the project provided her training on cattle rearing. After getting the technical training from the project, she received a cash grant of BDT 5000 to start the IGA. In the meantime, Lucky Begum’s savings reached to BDT 30,000. Lucky Begum purchased a cow with BDT 50,000 together with the grant amount and the BDT 15,000 loan which she had availed from the SHG. She started rearing the cow and it had a good growth. The possible price of the cow was estimated as BDT 90000. It is quite visible that the price of her productive asset has increased. In addition to raising the cow Lucky Begum works as a day labourer and earns about BDT 500 per day. Moreover, her daughter got educational stipend and supportive materials like school bags, geometry box, umbrella etc. from Islamic Relief to continue her education. In addition Islamic Relief also supported Lucky to include her in the Social Safety Net (SSN) program from where she gets support. It is praiseworthy to note, she got a two-roomed house from the Prime Ministers’ housing project. IRB facilitated her application for the housing opportunity. By getting all these sorts of support from IRB and other means, now her family is running well and she found to be very instrumental to come out of poverty. Her house was found very clean. It seemed that she has been maintaining a hygienic norm to maintain her household. It is to note that to enhance her knowledge and skills on child rights, protection and other social issues she had been provided with necessary information through sessions, orientations, training etc. On top of the above Luck was selected as the cashier of the SHGs and she was provided leadership and management training to develop her capacity as a leader. With her improved leadership capacity, she is found to be very committed to disseminate the learning among the communities. Seeing her upgradation in terms of economic and social aspects everyone in her community now respects her.
At present two of her daughters Kakali and Kuheli are studying in grade 5. Both of her daughters are good students. Lucky Begum’s found to be very committed not to marry off her daughters at an early age. At the end of the session while her case was noted, happy Lucky Begum said “If we apply the learnings whatever Islamic Relief Bangladesh has taught us, success would eventually follow us. I must say that, IRB came to us as a blessing in our village.”
It is understood from the discussion with others that Lucky’s progress motivated others in the village and they would like to work like Lucky by joining the local SHG as a member.