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“Difficulties and obstacles
overshadow the positive changes”

Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary takes big interest in uplifting the living standard in his community. He is a member of two community groups. In Sri Nirankara Samuha he is the president and in Omkar Samuha he is the secretary. The two groups are placed very near to each other but since the members of Omkar Samuha are not literate, the 35 year old president volunteered to help the group. Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary lives in Hathihawa, Dohani VDC, ward no.3 in Kapilvastu district. Dohani is one out of two VDCs in which Gramin Swabalamban Samajik Kendra (GSSK) operates. Community empowerment is the aim and capacity building of community groups the means for GSSK, an organization supported by MS Nepal.

A lot of changes have happened in both groups, according to Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary.
“Men and women can now sit together and discuss and due to trainings in vegetable farming the livelihood of many members has changed for the better. Many members including myself have taken up loans to start a shop and we are now earning good money and have learned to save a bit also. I am now able to help others by providing loans with low interest to the ones in need,” Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary says.

An exposure visit to Biratnagar proved to be very inspiring in learning how to motivate the group members and how to make the women even more engaged in the community work.

Despite the positive changes, Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary also wants to draw the attention to the problems that both the groups are facing. The groups have not been able to meet regularly and on three occasions they’ve had to stop their activities. On Two of the occasions the closure was due to the Maoists, who had closed the groups. One time the group stopped their activities themselves because of differences with GSSK. The problem, which is about a financial matter, is yet to be fixed. Of somewhat greater importance is the fact that both the groups have been closed by the Maoists’ so called People’s Government for the last four months.

“We are told by the Maoists not to meet and to give our saving money to them. If we do not follow these orders, they tell us that they will cut off our hands and feet. At one time they came to ask me for the saving money. But I succeeded in convincing them that this money was given to poor members of our group. Fortunately, they were able to confirm this information by talking to the members who had taken loan from the group. That saved my life”, says Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary.

His experiences with the insurgents are supplemented by Ram Brikha Dhobi, a social mobilizer from GSSK. “Two months ago we managed to conduct a three day long training about gender in another VDC. But the area commander told us to stop it warning that if we don’t follow their rules and regulations they can cut off our hands and feet. This, they said is thier area and we have to ask for their permission to work,” he said Jagadish Prasad Chaudhary knows well about the differences with GSSK over some finencial matter is also a subject of interest to the Maoists. “In our village we have the Maoists’ so called People’s Government. They are talking about this issue too and are putting pressure on us to solve the problem,” Jagadish says.