Gita Chilwals is a woman in her thirties from Lamjung. She belongs to the Bramin cast, and she is among the poorest people in the society. She has been a member of WAWCAS for 14 months, and recently she paid back the loan, which she got from WAWCAS to start up her own business, a pig farm. Her main business is to sell pigs, and Gita is managing her business successfully.
The family contracted a serious disease
Out of a sudden, the husband of Gita Chilwal got very ill, with high fever and fainting. The husband didn’t experience this kind of illness before, and therefore he had to be taken to the hospital, immediate.
Taken to hospital in public bus
When the husband of Gita was sick, the family only had the economical resources to transport the husband in a public bus, which is very crowded, and the trip took 3 hours, a trip who even for healthy people is very uncomfortable, just turned out to be horrible for a sick person, which was the case for the husband of Gita.
The family had no choice to do otherwise, and this tells a little about the economical situation of Gita and her family, clearly the family is very poor.
When the family arrived at the hospital they were directed to the Intensive care ward and told that the husband had severe hepatitis. Hepatitis is a medical condition which is inflammation of the liver, and cause inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ.
The cost of this treatment is very expensive and Gita and her husband would have been able to afford this amount of money without the help of the others. They simply could not afford to cure the husband.
Getting a helping hand
Gita immediately shared the situation with her group and the group collected 11000 rupees and sends it to the hospital through IME on the same day.
Because of this help, Gita’s husband could get the treatment that he needed, and he survived!
It was a very powerful story to listen to, and it expressed the thankfulness in Gita’s eyes and the feeling of power among all the women of the group, when she told us”I am so happy and thankful to the group that my husband got a chance to have a relevant and good treatment. I cannot tell how touched I am by this help from the other women. Without them, my husband would not have survived”
Great teamwork strengths the whole group
This story isn’t just a positive experience for Gita, but it brings courage to all the women, who through WAWCAS group are able to get the support and to help needed from each other in acute situations, both social as well as economical.
Before Gita was a member of the group, she would never have been able to get just 10 NRP from anyone, because usually other families do not care about if other families are in need, or the families have their own problems to solve.
Now less than one month after becoming a member, she has already been able to pay back all of the money, and this makes her very proud, because she achieved this through hard work.
Written by Sangeeta Shrestha, Program Director WAWCAS Nepal, and Nina Schriver, International Program Director, WAWCAS International. Founders of WAWCAS.