Creating HUGE Momentum with People Affected by Leprosy

 Jan 29th is World Leprosy Day
This is our leprosy connection and story

From Small Ideas

 

In 2018 during a return visit to Lalgadh Leprosy Hospital in southern Nepal, I and Lalita Labh who runs the community outreach project for the hospital, hatched a plan to start a simple scheme providing microcredit loans to women affected by leprosy to help them start small businesses and hopefully break the cycle of poverty and build their self esteem.

 

Lalita with the lady who gave us the idea for the project

We launched that project on Jan 30th 2019 with money donated by our wonderful Practice Momentum community. We gave out or first loan of £52 the first week of February and since then the Momentum Club project has not looked back.

In November 2022 our wonderful Practice Momentum website creator Dave and is GP wife Liz (who were in Lalgadh when I was there in 2000) went back to visit the hospital and were able to spend some time visiting each of our now 3 Momentum Club groups. This is Dave's report of that trip & the amazing ripples being created by this very simple but hugely impactful project.

 

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

Pramila sits on a mat in a small courtyard surrounded by other women in brightly coloured saris and children wearing smart school uniforms. She pulls down her black headscarf and her smiling face disappears from view.

“I used to hide my face like this,” she says. “Nobody trusted me because I had no money. My house was poor, the street was the toilet and I could not send my children to school.”

A woman next to Pramila speaks up. “When my husband got a small job he would spend all the money on alcohol and lie around all day and beat me.”

Pramila again, “When we knew other local women had problems we would not help because we were alone. But now we are a group and we all help each other.”

 

The Mahendranagar Momentum Club and visiting guests

This is the Momentum Club in Mahendranagar, a small town north of Janakpur in the Terai region of Nepal. The Terai is flat and for most of the year, dry and dusty. It’s a narrow strip of land in the south of the country, below the forested foothills and towering peaks of the Himalayas to the north.

 

Changing so Many Lives

The stories I’m hearing are being translated for me by Lalita Labh and Ramesh Choudhary. They both work at Lalgadh Leprosy Services Centre, one of the busiest leprosy hospitals in the world. Lalita came to this part of town in 2019 to see a person affected by leprosy. Whilst here she met Pramila and after some discussion the Mahendranagar Momentum Club was formed with Pramila as Facilitator.

Now the club has almost twenty members, all of them women. The stories they tell illustrate the transformation that has taken place in this poor and overlooked area of town.
The women’s low status meant that no bank would trust them. Now they can take out micro credit loans from the Momentum Club, funded by western donations. With these loans they can buy goats, cows or water buffalo, breed them and then sell the young animals to make a profit.
The Momentum Club interest rate is extremely low when compared to what the local banks would charge and no-one defaults on their repayments.

I’m led by Pramila through the clusters of houses, down the narrow alleyways, to meet the animals and their proud owners.

 

A club member with her water buffalo calf

These animals are the foundation stones of many of the women's businesses.

A grown water buffalo can provide milk, be rented out for ploughing pady fields and can be bread to increase your stock, which means you can generate more income and even slaughter a few animals for meat.

 

A Rising Tide Raises all Ships

The area is now more crowded than it used to be because of the building work that has taken place. The funds generated by the club have allowed almost all of the women to build new brick houses for their families. In most cases these new homes stand alongside their old mud and thatch dwellings, making the comparison even more remarkable.

 

One of the old houses

One of the new houses

Though the area is crowded it’s no longer dirty. The sense of community here means that everyone does their bit to help out. The women stand up for each other and mediate if there are disputes. The husbands no longer beat their wives and most of them can now afford to travel to find work. That has resulted in a drastic reduction in alcohol consumption among the men - a shining example to the rest of Mahendranagar.

 

 Growing Confidence

The Momentum Club women now have some status in town. Pramila is invited to join government meetings on local issues. She proudly shows me the club’s first aid kit, given to her as a gift at a recent meeting.

Very proud of her first aid box

The club members gather to discuss important topics like nutrition, other health issues and women’s rights. They are now talking about bigger projects like skill development and training.

The local mayor knows all about the Mahendranagar Momentum Club!

Not long ago he tried to evict the whole group, claiming that they were on government land needed for other purposes. When he threatened them with jail the club members all went to see him together. Pramila told the mayor that he could indeed send them all to jail - the women, their husbands, their children and all their animals - but that he should expect a fight! The mayor backed down and the women have had no further trouble. Pramila grins from ear to ear as she recounts this story.

 

You can feel the pride!

 

Money & Momentum

The Momentum Club is of course about money; without donations the women would have no access to loans with which to create a business and improve their lives. But the clubs are just as much about empowerment and community and the the growing momentum impacting the lives of everyone touched by the work within the club.

The women are making things happen together.

They are deciding how to use the money themselves. They now have a voice and a status that before they lacked. Some of the men are even asking if they can join 😁.

 

Mahendranagar Momentum Club is one of three similar clubs operating in the area around Janakpur. The others are located in the villages of Tulasi and Bega Shivapur.

A Tulasi Momentum Club Meeting

For more information about Nepal Leprosy Trust and Lalgadh Leprosy Hospital please visit their website.

If you'd like to make a donation to help us create a new Momentum Club in a 4th village to help more families and create more ripples please donate here.

 

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Until next time
Thank you