Struggle against Poverty

The nineteen hours long journey by road from Bhubaneshwar to Raiganj did not stop the Director Puthumai A. Nazarene from rushing to Balia, a village on the Bangladesh border of India, closer to a little town called Bindole, about 20 kilometers from Raiganj to be with a group of villagers, people, some Government officials and my Staff to distribute a machine that can press leaves that have been stitched together into plates! As part of the anti-human trafficking program, SWI gave away a Pressing Machine that uses a dais to press leaves into plates, which can become a regular source of income for a widow whose son left her in search of job six years ago, never to return. Fr. Herman Kindo, Sr. Naveena, Ms. Barnali Roy and Ms. Sushmita Sarkar from Social Welfare Institute, along with few field volunteers took part in the program. The program is being supported by Manos Unidas, through Association of Bengal Collaborators for Development (ABCD). The village has formed an Adolescent Girls' Group to monitor the movement of adolescent girls and women so that women do not fall prey victim to human trafficking.