Home ›› 12 Oct 2022 ›› Nation
A total of 5,915 youths were imparted skill development training for making them self-reliant in the district last fiscal year.
“We have arranged institutional and non-institutional training for them on nine income-generating trades during the last 2021-2022 financial year,” said Golam Mahbub, Deputy Director of the Department of Youth Development (DYD).
Nasima Khatun, a resident of the Bhadra area in the city, got training from the DYD and started a block and boutique business on a small scale in 2015.
Around 1,000 women coming from poor and underprivileged families now got employment in Nasima’s Block and Boutique House.
Nasima, the mother of three daughters, is now a successful entrepreneur in Rajshahi city.
She said many underprivileged and distressed women have become self-reliant working in boutique houses in the metropolis contributing a lot to society.
Rupali Khatun, 35, a housewife of Nalkhola village under Paba Upazila in Rajshahi district, has become a successful woman entrepreneur after eradicating her deplorable condition.
Within a gap of nine years, she is now the owner of Toha Boutique where four women are working permanently and around 300 others are getting benefits either directly or indirectly from the enterprise.
Simultaneously, she also has a fish farm on a 30-bigha of ponds and a poultry farm with around 1,500 chicks creating jobs for around 50 people.
“I got a huge response from the people that inspired me to do the work vigorously,” she said, adding that her monthly income is now around Tk one lakh on average.
However, the success did not come overnight, as she had to face various types of constraints and hurdles to attain it.
Saturday Rupali said she had to face an awful situation about four years back when her husband incurred a huge financial loss in his fertilizer and insecticide dealership business in 2011.
Initially, she took a 14-day institutional training on sewing and tailoring from the department of youth development in 2013. After taking a loan from the department and some of her neighbours, Rupali started her sewing and tailoring business the same year.
Within the next two years, she was given the national youth award as a successful woman entrepreneur in 2017 in recognition of her remarkable achievement in the field of women’s empowerment. This year, she was also given an acknowledgement for being a successful young woman.
Not only Nasima Khatun and Rupali Khatun, but many other women entrepreneurs are also contributing a lot to intensifying the local economy.
DYD Deputy Director Golam Mahbub said more than 1,300 youths got jobs under the DYD’s self-employment generation and poverty alleviation programme, while 1,032 others received loans worth around Tk 3.61 crore under the credit support scheme.
He said they have given registration to 36 youth organisations besides recognition to 91 others in the district.
Apart from this, grants of Tk 79.40 lakh were distributed among 416 youth organizations from the youth welfare fund, while 50 others got Tk 4.64 lakh, he said.
