Maksuda Begum, 38, an inhabitant of village Chatragacha under Sadullapur upazila in Gaibandha. Mother of four young girls, Maksuda once started cursing her fate as she was finding it really tough to maintain a family of six with little earning from her rickshaw-van driver husband.
Little did Maksuda know that she would be able to transform her family’s life by age-old knowledge in animal husbandry. She was given four bulls for rearing for four months in 2018 under a project called Sorbojaya by a Dhaka-based NGO named Water Mark Livestock Management Limited. They made a shed for the cows, gave Maksuda necessary training and other facilities.
There was a deed between the NGO and Maksuda. She would fatten those four bulls for four months and sell them afterwards. She would be given half of the total profit made from the sale. Maksuda managed to achieve a profit of 30,000 Taka in her share at the very first time, giving her a huge boost to work even harder for the later. She was given three sets of calves in a year, giving her an average profit of 1,20,000 Taka in total, almost a dream come true for the mother of four.
“Without any kind of investment, I am making Taka 10,000 a month. My elder daughter is now studying at class nine and my second daughter is at class six. We have made a brick house with an electricity connection. Now we are doing very well,” Maksuda excitedly said.
Not only Maksuda, around 80 women have turned their lives around in Sadullapur upazila by rearing cows. One such woman is Julekha Begum, 43. Wife of an agricultural laborer Julekha too was looking for an opportunity to give a ray of hope to her five-member family and it was given by the project Sorbojaya.
Julekha joined the project two years ago and now she is making Taka 18,000 in an average in each month by rearing cows.
“Basically, my husband is a day laborer, and it is more of a seasonal job. We were in a state of misery earlier, but now time has changed. I am making monthly Taka 18,000 on an average without any kind of investment,” Julekha said.
Rokhsana Akter, 46, is another lucky housewife for Sadullapur, who changed her fate by rearing cows under project Sorbojaya. Her husband Sohel Miah works as a peon in a private farm in Dhaka and it was very hard for them to maintain their family of four with his little earning. But now, Rokhsana too, is making a handsome average earning of Taka 15,000 a month. Her son and daughter study in a college in Gaibandha.
According to the sources concerned to project Sorbojaya, they give three to eight cows aged around 20 months to each woman. They give training, treatment facilities and even feed for the cows, extending all-out support for the women rearing the animals. The women sell the cows thrice a year, in every four months’ interval, bringing a handsome profit for both the parties involved.
Two Dhaka-based online platforms Amar Food and Good Meat are helping to sell the beef through their sites, while they also help the women under project Sorbojaya to sell their cows directly to buyers during Eid-Ul Azha time.