Mayawati Devi reached her lowest ebb when she decided to cross the boundaries of her house to earn extra income for her children.

The 40-year-old was a homemaker in Akhiyatpur village in the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh, barely surviving with her husband and four daughters in agriculture. Her husband was jobless even after completing motor mechanic training. The future of the children was bleak.

Mayawati is one of many who face such issues in their lives, as identified by the Caritas India Saksham programme, which works towards empowering communities, particularly women, to participate more beneficially in grassroots governance and decision-making processes.

Saksham, which is operational in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, and Uttarakhand, works with marginalised and disempowered communities to help them gain access to food and nutrition entitlements.

She learned that the Saksham programme works for food and livelihood security with a specific focus on good governance. This motivated her to join the UNNATI SHG linked with the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) promoted under the programme.

Ms. Mayawati Devi took advantage of the opportunity and took a loan of Rs. 125, 000 from her SHG group and opened a four-wheeler repair shop in the village for her husband. To their surprise, in a few weeks, the motor repair shop picked up very well. Customers from neighbouring villages started coming to the shop for car repairs.

Now she earns every day approximately Rs. 1000–Rs. 1500 and can comfortably support her children’s education as well as the family. This is an additional income that has enabled her to provide a better education for her children. Ms. Mayawati now says with pride, “I believed and found the way out with the help of the Saksham programme”. Saksham manifested itself in my entrepreneurship, which guarantees my livelihood. She is also profuse in her words and says, “My words are not enough to thank the support received from DSWS Lucknow and Caritas India, New Delhi. The support has come when I was trying to wriggle out of the crunch financial situation.”

The bold decision to open a four-wheeler repair shop has impressed the village community and the four-wheeler owners in the village, as they don’t have to go far to repair their vehicles. One of the four-wheeler owners says that “he does not need to worry about his vehicle any longer as the repair shop is nearby.” Mayawati is now a role model in the village for being an entrepreneur for livelihood security. People in the village admire her for her bold decision when her family’s financial situation was very demanding.

She is very happy and relaxed as she prepares her children to send them to school. Ms. Mayawati Devi says the hard realities of life test the real character of a human being. The current situation of a person makes him or her what he or she wants to be in the near future.