Chandrama Patra, the second daughter of her parents, after completion of her High School Certificate Exam in 2004, was sitting idle at home in Thakurmunda. She got married to Kailash Chandra Sethi of Talapada village under Thakurmunda block in 2010. Her family comprises of six members – her husband, a son (Suvankar studying in Std.2), a daughter (Subhashree – 9 months old) and father & mother-in-laws.

In Talapada village, “Maa Sukheswari Self-Help Group” was formed by 12 young women for livelihood promotion with the facilitation of CYSD and Chandrama was one among them. Being active in the group, she was attending all meetings and various training programmes organized by CYSD. Out of her own interest, she used to maintain all SHG records in perfect manner. By observing her enthusiasm and area of interest in livelihoods promotion, CYSD Livelihood Team selected her to become the SHG Organizer to look after around 20 SHGs including her own SHG activities.

Meantime, the economic needs of Chandrama’s family grew up day by day and to mitigate that crisis, Kailash started a Common Service Center (CSC) i.e. Jana Seva Kendra at Talapada, but the business could hardly meet their entire requirements. In October 2019, Kailash availed an opportunity to become one of the distributors of LPG under a HP Gas Dealer based in Thakurmunda. The area being tribal dominated with affluent natural forests, at initial stage, the number of consumers were very limited. Normally, in forest area people do not show interest for use of gas due to availability of fuel wood within their reach. In Thakurmunda Block, people use traditional biomass as their primary cooking fuel. But they have little knowledge that wood fuel usage is associated with various negative effects on people’s living condition. The emitted smoke is one of the major health threats. That too fuel provision generates significant costs and puts drudgery burden on women.  On the other hand, massive extraction of trees leads to deforestation, which in turn not only affects global habitation due to a loss of carbon sinks, but also induces regional and local environmental impacts, including land degradation.

Chandrama could internalize that forests are the key to survival of human, animal and plant life around the world.  They are the source of food, medicine, fuel, and provide clean air and combat climate change by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. Several times she attempted to bring a movement through the women SHG members to break the chain of deforestation. When her husband became a LPG distributer, Chandrama’s efforts were easier. She got engaged in managing the LPG business and motivated the group members for getting gas connection. Initially, the process was very slow, but it increased gradually. Now, around 450 cooking gas consumers are connected from twelve villages of 3 Panchayats through Chandrama’s distributorship and some more in pipeline.

From the source of gas distribution, they earn a monthly income of 5500/. More importantly, now the community people are very happy by receiving LPG at their door steps, which provides them an option of clean, smokeless and healthy cooking.  In due course, they are realizing that the practice of using cooking gas is not only contributing to save the trees and forest, but also acting as a strategy to mitigate climate change risks.

Through receiving continuous encouragement and support of her family and capacity building training provided by CYSD, Chandrama got ample chances to work independently for the socio-economic development of her family. Now, she is well known in her locality and a prime mover of tribal women – creating interest and awareness among them not to use forest fuel any more, stop deforestation, reduce drudgery burden of collecting fire wood from forest and learn to live with dignity.