Small Grants

A Small Grant Brings Big Joy

Buddhi Bahadur Manandhar, 42, a resident of Machhegaon, is physically not perfect and can´t do hard labor to earn his leaving. The right part of his body - right hand and leg is weak enough. He runs a small shop on a four-wheel cart in the local market. Though he is living in a joint family comprising his old mother and a family of his brother, he has to look after her only daughter´s education. After the birth of her daughter, Nilisha, aged 9, her wife suddenly left home. Since then they don´t know about her whereabout. "Giving better education to my daughter for her better future is my responsibility, I have earn something and this is what I can do. I can´t carry heavy load nor I can go to work as construction labor." Buddhi expressed his hardship. "Most of the time my mother support me from Nilisha´s school fee from the money that she receives as Senior Citizen allowance, he added.

After the 2015 April earthquake, most of the houses in his locality got severely damaged including his home. They manage to rebuild it after three years of hard struggle with minimum grant support from the government but not being able to regain their daily life. Buddhi Bahadur had managed to regain his small business by taking loan from the cooperative but was not being able to pay his debt back. "The loan that my mother has taken to restart this shop was the big burden for me. With this support, now I can clear my debt and the remaining I will invest here, Buddhi Bahadur shared his plan with joy after receiving grant support from Jhigu Mitra.

Entrepreneurship training for women

In April 2018, Jhigu Mitra, our partner organization in Nepal, organized a training for women in Machhegaon village. Twenty women from earthquake affected families attended the training which focused on entrepreneurship development: Providing ideas to initiate income generating activities, create a network between like-minded people and enhancing the participant's entrepreneurship skills.

After the training, Jhigu Mitra identified eight potential candidates for future support by Jhigu Palaa. The Jhigu Mitra team will follow up with each of these women in the coming months and formulate a support program.

Jhigu Palaa is very proud of the energy and enthusiasm of the volunteers of Jhigu Mitra, who are so focused on improving the life of earthquake victims in the villages of Nepal!