Sabita Majhi

Sabita is one of our most successful poultry farmers. She is very proud of what she has achieved in a very short space of time and has ambitious plans for the future.

But before we met Sabita, hers was a sadly familiar story….she is married with two school-age children but her husband was unable to work as he suffers from severe arthritis.  Added to that, as members of what’s called the ‘backward caste’, the family was stuck in a rural poverty trap,  suffering social discrimination and ineligible even for the benefits the local authorities were offering other poor families in their village.

Luckily a neighbour introduced Sabita to one of our Livelihood Service Providers who was working in the area.  It quickly became obvious that Sabita and her family would benefit from our services and in particular Poultry Development Services – our programme to help women start earning their own income from raising chickens and selling the produce.

By all accounts, Sabita was a quick learner and grasped all the instructions our field team provided about how to raise a healthy flock of chickens without suffering any losses.  The extreme weather conditions in West Bengal means this is not always easy but Sabita triumphed and all her chicks grew healthy and strong.  The hens are great egg layers which no only provides a regular weekly income but also means the children now get a protein rich diet. 

The next step for Sabita is to join one of our poultry farming groups. As a group member she can really expand her enterprise, become independent of us and source the chicks, feed and vaccines (everything in our Poultry Toolkit) directly from the supplier. That’s what we call a success story.