Kumari Nilagiri, a young woman of 32, belongs to a family of marginal farmer of Gadabaguda village in Kalrlakana Panchayat of Rayagada district, Odisha. She lost her husband in November 2019 just before the occurrence of Corona pandemic. When her husband was alive, Kumari never went out of home for work, but used to support her husband in own farm land (transplanting, weeding and harvesting). After decease of her husband, she has been shouldering the entire burden of her family. Her two kids and a nephew are too young and nobody was there to support her family. So, the situation compelled her to get out of home to work as a construction site labourer along with managing the household agricultural work to earn the livelihood for her family lending household chores on her mother-in-law. Somehow, she was managing her family.

During the lockdown owing to outbreak of Covid-19, she has faced huge challenge to meet the day to day needs of her family. At the initial days of the lockdown, she managed the family with the PDS dry food materials received from government, but later on it was difficult on her part to manage with the limited food stock and even could not get any job to substantiate. With due support from the CYSD’S Child Development Project, she was facilitated to place job demand under MGNREGS and fortunately, she got labour work in nearby village road construction.  Besides, she was also supported with agricultural inputs like paddy seeds, organic manure and vegetable seeds for cultivation during the ongoing Kharif Season by the project and got a good return. Moreover, she is linked with OLM and MGNREGS for developing Nutrition Garden under Mo Bagicha programme.

“I am thankful to CYSD Child Development Programme team for their timely support which helped my family to survive for two weeks or so and learn the art of living during this Pandemic”, shared Kumari happily.