A lady who walks the walk!

GUWAHATI, March 10: Meet this lady, Mandira Barua, who walks the walk, instead of talking the talk – all for making girls from breadline families eke out their honest living. 

Since 2006 when she set up SATSAREE, a socio-cultural NGO, she has roped in as many as 800 women in her chain. The NGO got official recognition in 2007 since when it opted not to look back. She and her team are village hoppers. They hop from village to village and pick girls from breadline families and train them vocatiolly. The NGO’s job does not end there. It also makes placement facilities available for them, all free of cost.

In a one-to-one with this reporter, Mandira Barua said: “The force that drives me to work for the downtrodden is very simple – a good work always pays off, whatever meagre it might be. Initially I had to start with small works for the poor like picking one or two girls and rehabilitate them. Slowly and surely support keeps coming from others. My NGO started gaining strength with more women evincing their interest to work with me. And now we’ve some 800 members.”

On fincial front, Barua said: “I never charged money from girls for the service given to them. The beneficiary girls of SATSAREE have been working in different fields in different posts like receptionists, nurses and others. In course of time, our NGO came to the notice of the government that extended fincial assistance. This has made us broaden our horizon, covering more and more downtrodden girls.”

On love she gets from the society for the elephantine task she has taken up, Baruah said: “Some ten years back I did deliver a lecture at a meeting on the welfare of women. On the Intertiol Women’s Day on March 8 this year I received a telephone call from a woman. The woman told me over telephone that she still had a few words of the speech I had delivered at a meeting ten years back. She said that since then they have been starting the Intertiol Women’s Day function with the very essence of the speech which I had delivered. Since she has forgotten the speech, she requested me to remind her that. However, I was in a problem as I myself have forgotten what I spoke at the meeting she has mentioned. I had to request the woman to remind me a few words of the speech. She had to remind me a few lines that helped me unfold the entire theme of the speech. I conveyed the theme of the speech to the lady. Such love can’t be compared with any achievement.” 

On her NGO’s future plans, Barua said: “Our next project in the pipeline is rehabilitating eunuch (kinners) who keep begging in trains, buses and city roads. Our plan is to engage them in some works that suit their talents so as to let them earn their honest living in a descent way.”