Empowering India's Rural Poor through Poultry

In this report, we are delighted to publish our latest Annual Review for 2018/19 and tell you this inspiring case study.

Case Study

This is the story of Mangala, one of our most enterprising farmers. Now 35, Mangala was married at the tender age of just 16. By 19 years of age she was mother to two young children, staying in her village home looking after them and her parents-in-law while her husband worked in Kolkata as a construction labourer. After just four years marriage he fell ill with tuberculosis and came back home jobless. He has never fully recovered from this debilitating disease.

Mangala quickly realised that she had to start earning money to feed her two young children, her husband and his parents. She got in touch with a local agent who delivered old bicycle tyres to her house and she was tasked with pulling out the copper wires embedded in the rubber for cash. For each kilogramme of copper wire pulled, she received Rs.8 (about 10 pence). Doing this laborious and gruelling work, she managed to make about 50p a day. As soon as her youngest son was two years old, Mangala also got a job in the local fields as an agricultural labourer, planting seeds or picking crops, earning an additional £1 per day. Her hours were long and she was exhausted by the end of each day, her hands burning and cut from pulling the copper wires from the tyres. This was the story of Mangala’s life two years ago.

Then, at a village community meeting, she met Majida, one of our field team of Livelihood Service Providers. Majida inspired her to start poultry farming as an alternative option to the gruelling work she was doing just to survive. And so Mangala embarked on this new enterprise and proved to be an extremely hardworking and dedicated student who learned everything about poultry farming very diligently. She has raised a flock of more than 130 birds in almost 2 years now and has an excellent track record of zero chick mortality. She sells the cockerels and fresh eggs from her hens in the local market. Her husband also helps her to raise the chickens and their relationship has really benefitted from this. He now accepts that, as a money-earner, Mangala is a decision-maker in the family now. And her children, now 16 and 18, are very proud of her, especially as she has enabled them to stay in school and receive extra tuition to pass their exams with the money she is earning.

There is no doubt that Poultry Development Services has changed Mangala’s life and given the whole family a brighter future. She proudly says, “These little feathered friends have changed our lives and I have to give them all my attention! I am heavily indebted to them because they have taught us to work hard to earn money and produce food together as a family. Thank you Shivia – your project has revived my life!”  

Thank you for helping Mangala turn her fortunes around.

Best wishes from the team at Shivia

• Shivia's Annual Review 2018/19 (PDF)