Thirty-five-year-old Sheuli Begum from Khulna had a long journey as a female sales agent (FSA). When her husband left her and married another woman, she was lost and did not know how to support her family.
Against such adversity, becoming a micro entrepreneur was a decision that changed her life. In the last three months, she conducted six mobile-haat events, which allowed her to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to rural households. Now her monthly earning is at Tk9,000 by door-to-door selling health, hygiene, and nutrition-based products.
Under the Feed the Future Bangladesh Nutrition Activity, she took a training session organized by JITA Social Business Bangladesh Ltd.
Not only Sheuli, Bangladesh Nutrition Activity, implemented by Abt Associates, funded by USAID, had facilitated JITA to set up its 126 Female Sales Agent (FSA) network in selected areas of Khulna and Cox’s Bazar districts.
The project, Bangladesh Nutrition Activity (2019-2023) is working on nutrition outcomes by addressing food consumption, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices and behaviors in target areas. Their beneficiaries are pregnant and lactating women, children under five and adolescents.
On Monday, JITA arranged a national knowledge dissemination workshop in Dhaka where it said that a network had been successfully operating for the past 15 months, catering nutrition and hygiene related products, services to the doorstep of rural households.
The main objective of the collaboration was to provide improved access to nutritious diets and clean drinking water as well as sanitation and hygiene practices for rural households while generating supplemental income.
Riad Rouf, chief executive of JITA, said a national survey found that 71% of women did not have five types of nutritious food in the last 24 hours. They have deficiency in vitamin D, even though rural area has enough sunlight. They also had Vitamin C deficiency.
Aasif Zaman, project manager at Jita, said: “We created this chain to deliver nutritional food to people's doorsteps. Over the collaboration period, 3,625 courtyard sessions organized, 1,311 mobile bazars conducted and 7,878 doors to door sales secured while generating on an average of Tk700 to Tk1,000 supplemental income. With these major activities these Female Sales Agents were able to reach 20,610 unique rural households.”
Ayesha Akter Kona, technical lead at Bangladesh Nutrition Activity, said: “We provide capacity building training, help to networking with corporate partners and wholesalers, supply chain support, logistics support and community promotion. Our mission is to serve over 50 million rural consumers.”
Senior members from various FMCG companies, Financial Institutions, Digital financial service providers (DFS), Development partners, and NGOs were attended the workshop.
