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Meet Tika:

Tika Darlami, 45, now shops at her local grocery store. Five years ago this would have been an impossible scene, but Tika’s involvement in Oxfam’s programs has changed that.

“For more than 30 years, I stayed in the house doing household work…I thought that I couldn’t do anything outside because I was an illiterate woman…now I walk with confidence. I am a totally different woman.”

“I had difficulties in shopping then but now it is not a big deal for me. I can buy whatever I need from the market.”

“If you had come here five years ago, you would not have seen the community like this. You wouldn’t have seen community work lead by women. There would have been only men. We would have been confined to household and kitchen work. Collecting grass for cattle, wood for fuel, managing animal dung, washing the children’s clothes, cooking… these were my primary jobs then. Now my living standard has changed. And I am free from household work to see the outside world.”

Tika lives in Gumi, a rural village in the Surkhet district of Nepal where women’s opportunities are limited by social norms that can keep them tied to the household, low levels of literacy, and lack of awareness of their rights. Today, thanks to Oxfam’s project and the extraordinary efforts of the women themselves, Tika is recognized everywhere in the village.