Ms. Indra Maya Limbu, a poor housewife from, comes from a remote village (Basantapur VDC-4,) of Tehrathum District. She is a mother of 7 children (son-3, daughter-4). Her unemployed husband was alcoholic and had no any economic contribution to the family's requirements. Indra Maya had to shoulder full responsibilities to support the family of 9 members. She had terribly hard time to support her family's requirements from the production of her limited farm land. She was desperately looking for an income opportunities to support the increasing daily requirements of the family including food, cloths, stationeries for children's education and so on. But there were no income opportunities available in the village at least in her knowledge. Micro Interprise Development Programme (MEDEP), an UNDP funded programme, was implementing its enterprise development programme in her district. Since she belongs to poor family, MEDEP selected her as it target to develop as entrepreneurs and provided her micro-enterprise creation training. After receiving the training in ???? 2000 she was provided Rs. 5000 credit from Agriculture Development Bank, Nepal (ADBN). She bought the raw materials from that amount and started Khadi (handloom cotton cloth) weaving enterprise. Khadi cloth is popularly used by the poor people of hills and mountain region because it is made up of the pure cotton and warm in nature.

After successful operation of the enterprise, she paid back the bank credit of Rs. 5000 within the given time and applied for Rs. 10,000 credit to expand her enterprise. Assessing the success of the first cycle of her business, ADBN provided her the credit of Rs. 10,000 as second cycle credit support. From this amount she purchased sufficient raw material and increased production capacity of her enterprise. Now, Indra Maya produces 70-80 meter clothes a month and earns NRs. 3,000 to 3,500 per month. Her production has a good demand right at the village itself and some times it is sold in the local market. She says market is not a problem for her product. Many villagers come to her place and buy the cloths and some times it is taken to the nearby market places and sold out. MEDEP is helping me by providing business counseling services and marketing linkage from Enterprise Development Facilitators working at the district Indra Maya says. Now she also learned bookkeeping and she maintain simple account of her business transaction.

Due to her hard work and entrepreneurship, now she is respected by the neighbors than before. Even her alcoholic husband has been back in track and now helps Indra Maya to run the business.

Those who has seen and observed the miserable situation of Indra Maya before can apparently compare the significant change occurred in her status after the undertaking of the Dhaka weaving enterprise. According to her, now she has been able to spent more on food, clothes, children's education and other family requirements. On top of that she has been able to buy some gold ornaments for herself.

Indra Maya is just an example. There are thousands of poor men and women at the rural communities who are looking for entrepreneurship opportunities to be materialized for securing their livelihood. Thanks to UNDP funded MEDEP which is working to diversify the livelihoods and increase the income of low-income families through micro-enterprise development and promotion in Nepal. The growing numbers of micro-entrepreneurs in 20 districts with UNDP funded MEDEP apparently indicate that the programme is heading towards achieving its goal of poverty reduction in the country.