Facilitating Agricultural Regeneration Measures (FARM) Northeast (NE) supported by Misereor, Germany has travelled a long distance to in creating resilience and this case from the Chirang district of Assam is yet another inspiring tale of a women’s group. This story stands tall as living evidence of how the programme interventions have been able to sustain beyond the completion period.

Bongaigaon Gana Seva Society (BGSS) during the FARM NE phase II interventions facilitated the formation of a 10 member women’s group involved in activities like kitchen gardening, livestock rearing, silkworm rearing and weaving. BGSS supported this group with the all necessary technical inputs from time to time. These set of women took it from there and put in their hard works for months and years together to earn a living and little did they know that this would go a long way to support them when they would need the most.

Ansaima Self Help Group (SHG) was formed with 10 active women members in Sisubari village of Chirang district of Assam way back in 2016. The group was already involved in various activities prior to the FARM programme reaching that village. We were involved in kitchen gardens and silk working was not able to extract results out of our hard work until the team from BGSS came and showed to us the way, said  Ms Sitra Narzary member of the group.

With support from BGSS, the group continued to work hard for 4 years and counting since its inception. In our society women are mostly hard-working and we could see them working almost double than what they usually did to achieve their goal of achieving financial security, said Anthony Basumatary, Programme Coordinator of FARM NE. The ethnic women in this part of the country are mostly involved in not only house chores and babysitting etc but also in agriculture and other income generation activities. They have this ingenious art of striking a balance as they are left with no choice.

Ansaima SHG was now ready with quite a no of products in their kitty and it was time for them to take these products to the market. BGSS assisted them to reach out to the market. Marketing has always been a challenge for us, yet we tried to link this group to the nearest possible market, said Fr Linesh Chacko, Director, BGSS.

COVID 19 pandemic struck hard on the poor and people in the FARM intervention areas were not an exception. The national lockdown followed by a series of lockdowns at state level spell havoc for the daily wage earners and all other poor income groups including the agriculture sector.

However, Ansaima SHG stood apart and strong as well. Their bank passbook had a handsome amount of Rs 1,75,000/-. A part of the amount was utilised for common interests. Of the balance of Rs 1,00,000/- the members distributed Rs 8,000/- among themselves to sustain during the pandemic days. Love and care for others are an inherent nature of women and this was visible here as well when this group offered a loan of Rs 20,000 to different families in their villages during the crisis. Collective actions bring positives, hence proved one more time.

I felt happy today that our hard work has brought some success in the group. Although we were much affected by the Covid -19 Lockdown we could to certain extend withstand the challenges we were facing. With the money distributed from the group we could buy food items and other essential thing for our families. Some of us could even buy more chickens and goats for rearing, said Ms Sumitra Basumatary, secretary of the SHG.