"Now, we do not need to ask our husbands for pocket money" said Sabitri Bhattarai, Chairwoman of Puspanjali Bee Keeping Group in Padamapur VDC, a relocated settlement from Chitwan National Park. She added "This is the outcome of a training and institutional support provided by Women Development Office (WDO), Chitwan through BISEP-ST support".
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In 2004, local women from this relocated village formed a bee keeping group. With support from WDO, they started bee keeping from only five bee-hives. Now, they have more than 20 beehives producing about 400 kilogram of honey per year, providing a net income of about Nrs. 70,000. This is our additional income, said Sarswoti Sapkota who is also the vice Chair of Prajjal Women Cooperative Group. This bee-keeping group is also affiliated with the Women Cooperatives and have a regular saving of NRs. 50 per month. The regular saving scheme, not only a means of long term saving, but also empowers local women in entrepreneurship development, added Sarswaoti Sapkota. This is also very interesting to learn that the group has decided to provide loan for poor and minorities, particularly Tharu women, with only two percent interest rate to initiate micro-scale enterprises.
"We do not know anything about environment. Our involvement in bee keeping was also a turning point for us in the conservation of plants. We realised that the use of Gaidachhap, a pesticide, used for pest control in mustard killed our bees. As a result, we initiated an anti-pesticide campaign in the village" said Ambika Dahal, one of the leading group members. She added, "We also realised that we need flowering plants like Rudilo for the quality honey production".
Sarswoti Dahal, Women Development Facilitator at the WDO, is quite happy to see the confidence of local women and their participation in community development works. Ms Dahal mentioned that "WDO Chitwan provided a 3 day bee keeping training to 10 women from this relocated village with bee hives and we only provided some morale and facilitations, this all is the progress of local women group members and their commitment.
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With this all efforts, the marketing of the honey is the key challenge for local women. The Chairperson of the Bee Keeping group has some worry on the future marketing and market price. The chairwoman mentioned that "We can not sell our honey to Bee-keeping producers association until we do affiliate with the association. Now, we are in process to register our group with this association, this will help us in marketing of our honey".
Despite a total new environment, local women in this relocated village are involved in micro scale enterprises that not only help them to earn a subsistence amount of money, but also provide them space in decision making process of development process. The commitment of these local women in conservation is also worthwhile to consider while developing micro-enterprise activities in the rural setting.
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