When Suktara Begum married Sohorab Hossain at age 20, she accepted the severe restrictions traditionally placed on Bangladeshi wives. But after Heifer’s gender and justice training, Suktara started asking questions — and making changes in her life. The training sparked change in Sohorab, too.
You are helping Suktara — bright, chatty, curious Suktara — gain the confidence to create a more prosperous future where she and Sohorab collaborate as true partners. The couple actively practices equality and now work together for the good of their farm.
“If both of us are working together and we don’t respect each other’s thinking, how can we grow and shine?” Suktara asks.
See Suktara and Sohorab shine in the images below.
Through Heifer, they learned their past method of mixing water and food together and feeding the animals from one trough just once a day left the animals in need of water.
“We are human, we can speak, the cows cannot speak,” she says.
Heifer became the cows' voices, teaching Suktara to keep the cow feed and water in separate side-by-side troughs and making sure the water trough is never empty.
“As I have the training on proper knowledge about the process of feeding, the process of nourishment — like giving medicine for worms, giving vitamins, the type of food they need to eat — the cows are growing faster, becoming healthier,” Suktara says.
Suktara and Sohorab now have 28 chicks, 23 hens and 2 cocks. More chickens mean more eggs, which means more income. Suktara now sells 14 eggs per day for 140 taka ($1.65). For those eggs she wants to hatch, Heifer taught her about a hatching pot. It is a clay container that the bird can nest in. It has a small spot for food and water so the bird does not need to move and can continuously provide heat to the eggs. Since using the hatching pot, the hatchability of her eggs has doubled from five out of 10 eggs to 10 out of 10.
Heifer showed Suktara how to grow fodder with little input in a vertical system inside her house during times of little rain. Thanks to this and other improved methods, she has not lost a single goat since the training.
Sohorab felt defeated when he lost his job as a teacher. “Then I thought, OK, with the amount of land I have, if I do farming, I can manage,” he says. When they first wanted to cultivate crops, they hesitated. “We didn’t have financial support or knowledge. After Heifer, we have financial support and knowledge, so we can explore professionally.”
Heifer taught them how to use their cows’ manure to create compost and fertilizer. This not only saves them money they would have spent purchasing chemical fertilizer, but it also increases crop production and is good for the environment. More productive crops mean they can help others by giving them their excess vegetables.
“If I can produce the crops, then I am able to eat, meet the demand for my family, and I also pass on the gift to others in the neighborhood. It is better for all of us, isn’t it?” Suktara says.
A letter from a Heifer donor in the United States is read to them and then translated into their native Bengla. Suktara says she would like to thank the writers of the letter. Sohorab elaborates.
“We’re very happy and we’re grateful they have shown concern from far away,” he says.
He in turn has a message for the donors. “We are wishing you luck, health and prosperity so you can stand by many other people.”
Your gifts provide not only the opportunity for sustainable livelihoods, but also equitable futures. Thank you for helping create a healthier, brighter and fairer world.
