Mrs.Deepa, aged 29, is living in Elapakkam irular colony in a hut constructed in village panchayat common land. She studied up to 10th Standard. Both she and her husband are casual labourers. She has 2 children, boy named Prathap, 11 years old, studying in 6th standard and girl child named Bhuvaneswari, 7 years old, studying 2nd standard in local government school.
As she needs to take care of the family, she used to go for casual work only 5-10 days in a month and her husband is also a seasonal labourer. They ran the family with difficulty. They used to borrow loans from greedy money lenders only for meeting family expenses and that resulted in paying higher rate of interest from their meagre income. In this situation, Omega/ASSCOD started a micro loan programme in this village and she availed a loan amount of Rs.15,000 for purchasing milch animal. She purchased a pregnant cow in January and it gave birth to a calf in February end. She gets an average 5-6 litres of milk every day and sells it for Rs.150. So, she gets an additional income of Rs.3,000 every month and she has been paying her loan repayments (Instalments) regularly.
As she studied up to 10th Standard, she volunteered to become a Seva Sakthi which helps her to get honorarium of Rs.1000/month. She says that being Seva Sakthi is a great opportunity that helped her learn the importance of self-confidence, all the issues being faced by women and how to overcome them. She feels happy to share her learnings with her fellow women in the village. Because of Omega/ASSCOD project, she earns Rs.4,000 every month and saves Rs.500/month in a savings account operated by her. She says that she earns more than her husband earns and it makes her feel proud and spend the money meaningfully to keep her family happy and is determined to enable her children to continue to study well.
In the month of May, she collected the loan repayment fully and paid it into ASSCOD account. She helped two women ( Mrs.Nandhini and Mrs.Rekha) to get Aadhaar ids. Also, Mrs.Nandhini suffered due to use of Copper-T and Mrs.Deepa took her to hospital and saved her life by enabling her to get right treatment at the right time. Also, they approached the Government Veterinary Doctor to conduct a camp in Elapakkam village to screen the milch animals for preventing major diseases. She says that after the Omega/ASSCOD project was started, a number of women have started to involve in income generating activities and all of them started to lead a happy life. She expressed her sincere thanks to ASSCOD/Omega for helping her to come out of poverty and to do service to her own people through being Seva Sakthi.
