Empowering India's Rural Poor through Poultry

What a busy three months! Our operations in West Bengal are growing; we have recently opened a third field office in Sundia (35km south-east of Kolkata) and we are researching a new location to open at the end of the year in order to expand our backyard poultry rearing programme. We are currently working with 4,295 home-farmers, training them in poultry and hope to increase this number to 4,550 by January, distributing a further 2,800 toolkits.   Because we train whole families – and each home-farmer has on average, between 5-6 dependents – that’s 23,600 people that we are helping! Olly Donnelly (Shivia’s CEO), Chris Langridge (Shivia’s CFO) and Charlotte Allum-Smith (Shivia’s EA) are off to visit the operations at the end of October – to see first-hand the impact your donation is having on the lives of these incredibly poor people. Our local team, Nirdhan, can’t wait to show us around and we will report on our trip in the next report (as well as include some great photos!).

What we are starting to see now is the impact that your donation is having on the lives of children and young women. Young children whose parents cannot afford to send them to school can get involved in our backyard poultry programme and learn a life-long skill as well as a sense of stewardship; young women, who typically take over the running of the household from around 20, are empowered by the programme.   With the profits from selling chickens and eggs (up to 30% increased income for a typical family), often the women choose to buy the books and uniforms to send their children to school – a dream of any parent the world over.  We are noticing that children are starting to wear better clothes, more are attending school, are having better access to medical facilities, are eating more nutritious meals and have better hygiene etc. 

“Shivia has changed my life! I bought my first poultry toolkit in 2013 and from the profits I could buy another two. I have now been able to afford to buy a goat. The profits from the chicken meat and eggs and the milk from the goat has meant I have been able to afford to buy the books and uniforms needed to send my two children to school for the first time – something I could previously only dream of and which I was never able to do.” Kumar, home-farmer

Please have a look at the video to hear from Chandrani Banerjee – Head of our Livelihood Programme in West Bengal – describing one family’s amazing progress out of poverty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txjz-X7Xr6A&feature=youtu.be

Thank you so much for your ongoing support and kind donations – we wouldn’t be where we are today without you and we look forward to updating you again in January with our home-farmers’ progress.

Links:

• Case study