“It’s not just my success, it’s the success of all of us”, with her beautiful smile and scintillating eyes, while Aklema was unfolding her leading role of an exemplary community entrepreneurship, others’ nodded with a titter to acknowledge. Aklema Khatoon, a vicenarian girl, belongs to a marginalized Muslim family of Kanaipur village under 11 no. Birghoi Gram Panchayet (Local Self Governance Institution or LSGI) of North Dinajpur district in West Bengal, India. Kanaipur village is a dense habitation of marginalized community of Islamic religion, who are mostly engaged in unorganized laborers in agricultural sector to earn their daily bread. And Aklema’s family is one of them. In 2010, being a young girl having entrepreneurial attitude, Aklema was keen to support his father and thus her family. She was trying not only to support her own family, but also to involve her neighborhood women so that they can also contribute to their families. But being a habitation of marginalized community, Kanaipur is facing the humiliation of destitution, religious falsities and conservative attitude towards girl child in her own community, which were most macabre hindrances in Aklema’s endeavor. She failed to accomplish for couple of times, but did not quit. And finally in 2013, with the support of Local Self Governance Institution (LSGI) she was succeeded to form her own self-activity group comprising of few other women of her community to perform distinctive forms of domestic agricultural livelihood activities. Earlier, the fund to support employment activities against impoverishment was there with LSGI, but without any utilization as there was nobody ready to start or lead the entrepreneurship. Her effort not only creates the awareness about the agricultural livelihood activities among the women of her own community, but also their families are now receiving fresh vegetables from their own vegetable gardens developed by the activity groups of women and also earn some money to sell the vegetables in the market. Now, instead of just restricting themselves within household works, the women are approaching LSGI to get support to form their activity groups. Aklema took a small step towards a big change by overcoming all the obstacles. With her passion and dream to socially develop her community, Aklema leads an example of woman empowerment with community entrepreneurship in a remote corner of India.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 18:31:20 +0000
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