Jamila Begum, 35, wife of a day-laborer, Mominul Islam, is now at the threshold of eradicating her long-lasting poverty through household-based chicken rearing through modern method.
Jamila, mother of three daughters and a son and a resident of Bargachhi village under Paba upazila of the district, embarked on the mission of achieving self reliance early 2012.
At the preliminary stage, she received training on chicken rearing along with its proper feeding, vaccination and marketing by the Local Service Providers (LSP).
In the current year, she earned Taka 2100 after selling eggs and chicken. She told BSS that both demand and market price of native chicken variety is higher than that of others.
After becoming a part of her 25-member of a local cooperative society, Jamila enjoys some extra privileges of poultry rearing and marketing.
Elder daughter, Monira Parveen, a student of class nine of her village school, gets all institutional expenses from her mother’s earning that encourages her to higher education in the days ahead.
Like Jamila Begum, many other households of the poverty-stricken community are involved in the poultry rearing activities.
Jeshmin Akhter, local community leader, says all the organized members are very much optimistic about improving their living and livelihood condition through the poultry rearing value chain. The households have learnt how to promote the community business after the best uses of the local resources and services.
Talking to BSS, the organized women urged the local service providers to supply modern technology and other requisite facilities to their activities for making the business profitable and sustainable.
Like the Bargachhi, more than 8,500 poor and extreme poor households most of them are women have developed 214 chicken rearing societies in 17 upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Natore and Pabna districts.
Through establishing service contract points in their respective areas more than 700 LSPs deliver requisite training, advice and inputs services to the producers after taking training on chicken rearing.
Various public institutions and agencies provide extension services to the LSPs, who earn on an average Taka 1500 per month. In practice, they disseminate different modern technology to the producers through setting demonstration plot within the working households.
“We organize community meeting with assistance of private companies for building awareness about quality products regularly,” said Faruque Hossain, an LSP of Charghat.
