Success Stories
USAID/Nepal's Education for Income Generation in Nepal Program (EIG)
Brick Maker buys Land
Throughout the Terai area of Nepal there are landless communities of ethnic Madeshi's who work as day laborers for landowners during the rice growing season and work as general laborers the rest of the year to scrape together resources to feed their family. In the district of Banke in the Mid-West development zone there are few that can afford to send their children to school and there is a high rate of illiteracy in many of the poor villages. Often speaking only their Abadhi language, they have a hard time finding other employment opportunities in Nepal.
The EIG-CM Project funded by USAID and implemented by Winrock International and ten partners conducted brick making (molding) training to 44 people in Udayapur Village in Banke District of Nepal. Of the 44 trained many were husband and wife such as the two featured here, Mr. Kailash Loniya and his wife Gopi Loniya. The training, managed by Winrock's partner F-Skill involves preparing the materials (sand and clay preparation), making the clay brick (mixing clay, water and sand to the exact consistency, mastering how to form the bricks with forms, drying and stacking the bricks). A skilled and practiced brick maker can make between 800 to 1000 bricks per day worth 320 - 400 rupees. This is at least 3-4 times what daily laborers in the villages of Banke are making.
The course includes husbands and wives who can work together to increase their income. Mr. and Mrs. Loniya took the EIG-CM training from the 18th of April 2008 to the 1st of June 2008 and have begun earning in the brick factories near their village. Within 20 days after the training, they together had earned more than 20,000 rupees which also included their earning during the on-the-job training. With this earning, Mr. and Ms. Loniya have purchased 2.25 Katha of land and are now raising vegetables and a rice crop there. Before this training, they were landless. They want to continue their work in the brick kiln in the future. With the greater income they wish to spend money for their children's education and health care. Before the training Gopi was a housewife with no outside income and Kailash was a laborer earning 50 rupees/day, but not on a regular basis.
