Welcome to the part 2 of my blog. As you all know, I’m impressed by the objectives of WAWCAS program. Before ESR*, Tribina came to visit my home, she filled out the women form and we had a conversation about my personal life too. At 3rd ISM* we already confirmed the date for next meeting. On 16th February, we decided to gather at Nayapauwa at 11:am so I was all set for the meeting by finishing my household chores. I was really curious about the meeting, I heard the topic was ESR, but I had no understanding about it. We all were waiting for Tribina and Ganga. They arrived on time. And Tribina greets us and started the meeting by warm welcome and review of the last meeting. Then she asked what is in our minds when we hear “poor”? And who are the poor people through our perspective? We answered her questions by saying poor people are those who don’t have large amount of land, bank balance, unemployed, couldn’t afford good health service and quality education for their children and so on. Similarly, she asked who are rich people according to us? Then we replied her by saying rich people are those who can afford quality education for their children, good health service, having their own vehicles, large amount of land, bank balance and can afford anything they want. After this discussion she thoroughly explained what ESR mean. As far as I understand the full form of ESR is Economic Status Ranking and it means in which category we belong according to our economic situation. I wasn’t aware of this before. The program is for needy women and definitely not for high class people, so the aim of doing this is to find out which women meet the objectives of for the program. I have learnt that according to our government there are 4 phases of ranks which are as bellows:
- People who can live with his/her own property for 0-3 months are ranked as ultra-poor.
- People who can live with his/her own property for 3-6 months are ranked as poor.
- People who can live with his/her own property for 6-9 months are ranked as medium.
- People who can live with his/her own for 9-12 months are ranked as non-poor.
She had brought the chart where all the structure of ESR were ready and she also brought the card with our names in it. Then she started calling our name in turn and we were supposed to post our card in the right rank where we belong. One of my friends post her name on medium category, we told her that she wasn’t belonging to that class. Later Tribina asked her why she posted her name there? And she replied that she was embarrassed to post her name on poor category. Therefore, Tribina motivated her to reconsider. I was very clear in which class, I’m going to post my name. Accordingly, she called my name and I ranked myself in poor category. It was my honest decision which I’m not ashamed of.
After the session finished, she announced to us that along with me 24 members of women were selected. I was very happy to get opportunity to form our own women group.
Likewise, she discussed about social map. Social map is the location of each particular member in the area. This session is held to show the other staff of the WAWCAS organization so they can easily reach the area where our program has been implemented and find out the home of each member easily. She taught us the things we need to be aware of while drawing the map. We should always keep our head to the north side, symbolized the places, buildings, road, tree, temple, river, bridge and so on. And then, she told one of us to sketch our social map – and Bimala drew the map of our group. After finished drawing the map, she made us reflect on the session and then she fixed the date for the next meeting. Tribina was very thankful for our active participation.
There were no limits of my happiness, I realized I had learned something new from this topic. I thanked her personally and expressed my feeling how grateful I’m to be the part of WAWCAS. And then I went home with a smile on my face.
Note: ESR is Economic Status Ranking, ISM is Information Sharing Meeting