Society Development Committee(SDC)

Mst Shilpi Begum

Md. Monirul Islam 

A tale of an entrepreneur

Usually, I am engaged in household work, care my children and livestock and put effort in small scale vegetable gardening. I assisted my husband in agricultural works to reduce labor cost for farming. But it didn’t make remarkable difference. Difficulties concerning familial issues remain existed. Being a rural housewife, I didn’t have ambition and practical experience to earn individually for supporting my husband financially but I was eager enough to contribute. Meanwhile, SDC started operating project activity with safe vegetable producers nearby. I took the opportunity and joined Bangdoba safe vegetable producer’s group under PACE project located at Koijuri union of Sadar upazila under Faridpur district. I started dreaming of being an entrepreneur. The project provided technical training for vegetable production along with management of vermin-compost production and establishment using kitchen waste. By using training knowledge, I started working on vermin-compost demonstration primarily. Later the project assisted me to start a second business of producing and selling vermin-compost, environment friendly, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer produced by earthworms. Initially I received 5 chari and 1 Kg African earth warm from the project and I managed to collect 75 Kg cow dung to start over production. At the first phase I successfully produced 48 Kg vermin-compost that I used in to my tomato and bitter gourd field and experienced an unexpected return. This demonstration made nearby farmers excited and encouraged to apply this product to their vegetable and crop fields. Finding the opportunity to have such a local market, I intended to increase my production and business expansion, I set up more 9 chari with that previous 5 to ensure more production. At last my dream came true to be an earning entrepreneur. Last year I produced 3024 Kg vermin-compost. I used about 400 Kg for my vegetable garden and agricultural land and sold the rest 2624 Kg to local farmers and Madaripur market. This effort made me able to earn BDT3000 to BDT3500 monthly which I shared for household expenses and business expansion. I’m thankfully delighted to be an active parts for functioning in the development of fertility of local lands and for assisting local farmers in reducing agricultural expenses for producing more and safe products.