Hemanti Devi
Born in the village Raghavpur of Bikram block in Patna, Bihar, Hemanti Devi was one out of four siblings (2 brothers and 2 sisters). Her father was a farmer and while she was growing up with her siblings, their financial situation was not that comfortable. It was a hand to mouth kind of situation. Hemanti is a high school graduate. Her life after every school day was very hectic. “I used to come back from school and help my mother out with the household chores. Since we were from a farming family, I also had to help out with some work in the fields. It was tough to manage everything as I had a deep love for studies as well. My favorite subject in school was Biology. I was interested in working in the healthcare sector and was intrigued by the working of a hospital. My parents were also very supportive but because of lack of money, they could not help me go to college. There were too many mouths to feed and higher education had to take a backseat.”
At the tender age of 18, Hemanti was married off by her parents into a farming family itself. Hence, there was a constant financial stress in her life even post-marriage. She could not study any further even. However, her husband and in-laws did not stop her from working.
She had her first child after three years of marriage and this was a mutual decision for the couple.
She said that “even after having a child, I used to go out of my house to do some social work while my mother-in-law took care of my child. She was a great source of support for my independence and that helped me to become a Community Health Facilitator under CDOT’s CHF project”
The continuous training provided by the CDOT has been very helpful for her. Information about menstrual health, pregnant women and how to take care of their health in this sensitive period was particularly helpful for the community. Sanitary pad usage and menstrual hygiene was also a topic that was popularized in the community in the CHF project. The technical training of the various apps like Google Meet, etc., was something that helped Hemanti as she was not aware of such apps before she enrolled as a CHF.
She says, “as a CHF, I go door to door for conducting the survey and imparting knowledge on the various modules of health that I receive from CDOT from time to time. I see around if anyone in my area has any medical issues to help them get primary level treatment through the free Tele-Consultation sessions held weekly through CDOT with the General Physician and Obsgync. It makes me really happy that I am able to aid the people of my community without them having to travel long distances or pay for such consultations.”
According to Hemanti, her life has changed a lot since the past few years. She says that ‘today, I’ve been able to support my children education as my elder daughter is pursuing Bachelor of Arts degree and my elder son is doing his B.Tech. I feel that since I was not able to get a higher education, I want my children to study as much as they want and realize their dreams to achieve success.”
As a development institution CDOT always take holistic approach of development. Our vision is to reach the people with multiple products as per their requirement. We started working on financial inclusion probably we are among the first few organizations in this sector. Financial inclusion is one area where 360-degree services related to financial services is delivered to clients. We started working in this field from very beginning and now serving to 5 million clients across 6 states. We faced many problems at initial stage but as technology improved now it is real big thing has been created with huge network of BC agents providing all possible kind of services to untouched rural and urban mass. Now all kind of credit is also being proposed through BC network. During COVID period also BC agents worked very bravely and acted as true warriors.
COVID-19 given us a lot of learning. We learnt and converted this into making the organization more efficient and effective. At one stage where every where lock down but we kept on working and developed many inhouse software to operate more efficiently. It helped us to learn working from home and better control and deliveries. CDOT capitalized the opportunity and improved the deliverables to communities.
With a workforce of 200 people that totally depends on revenue was a big challenge for us but we worked kept giving salaries and other things and very smoothly came out. So, lock down opened a new diaspora for us to operate. CDOT believe in delivering meaningful services, our work in skilling the youth and providing loan for sanitation and creating hyper local market has been excellent initiatives and we are delivering best and our team has always been stood behind the cause.
After 20 years of our operation we are fresh full of energy to deliver more and more in rural and urban areas. With our effective work force and also alumni of CDOT has proved that CDOT is capable of handling the things in effective manner. We have young team mixed with experienced people forms a dynamic team.
In coming days, we are working to be more technology driven organization and we are developing software to address the need of the community. We are venturing into rural market, livelihood, training, housing and MSME finance. Creating platform for this.
At last I am thankful to all associated with CDOT for making the institution for great importance. I am thankful to staff and financers who always believed in CDOT. In coming days, we will come out with many more feathers to our cap. Thanks again.
-R.R.Kalyan
