A little help does a lot for Rokeya

Rokeya Khatun at Hadipur village in Satkhira earns Tk 400 a day from her three milch cows. PHOTO: STAR

She dropped out of school when she was a student of class ten. She faced hard days after her schoolteacher husband Abdus Samad lost his job.

She enlisted herself under 'Institution Building & Income Generation (IBI) Project' launched at the village by Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM). After training, she took a loan and bought 300 chickens and sold them at a profit of Tk 3,000. She then purchased a cow. It was a turning point in her life. She learned the skill by reading books on poultry and livestock rearing at Ganokenrda at her village.

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She increased her chicks from 300 to 1,500. She also bought two milch cows, each producing six litres of milk daily. She sold the milk at Tk 20 per litre.

Rokeya now dreams of a small dairy farm with at least 10 cows. It is a dream not far out of reach for a struggling woman like her.

Dhaka Ahsania Mission president and chief executive Kazi Rafiqul Alam recently told The Daily Star that the IBI project began in 1983, aiming to create self-employment for the rural poor through income generating activities. 'The special feature of the IBI programme is that it is not merely a micro-credit programme, rather we try to bring a qualitative change to poor people's lives through education', he added.