July 2. S*, a 12 year old tribal girl of Baididinga village, Keshapali, Jujumu-ra, Sambalpur, Orissa, India, lives 25 kms. away from the main road. She lives inside a small hamlet without \any communication. She has 2 younger bothers and 3 sisters. Her father and mother are illiterates, landless, and are casual laborers. She left her studies from III class in 2002 due to abject poverty, the apathetic attitude of her parents, and non-availability of educational facilities in her village.

She was rolling bidi (a country cigar) with tobacco and kendu leaf every day for 9-10 hours and earned hardly 20 rupees (0.40 US$) to supplement the family food and for her own expenses for clothes and oil and soap etc. Apart from bidi rolling, she also works in other agriculture fields, collecting minor forest products seasonally from a dense forest. Typically, she makes bidi and waits for a contractor to come and pick up the products. Sometimes she gets an advance from the contractor and is then bound to sell the product at any rate the contractor fixes. She gets less than 50% of the market price for her product.

In July 2006, ASHA, through the WI CIRCLE Project, identified her and motivated her towards education. She was counseled several times in an interactive way, to restart her studies. She felt shy about sitting with other younger children in the same class room. Her parents were not interested in her studies and concerned they would lose income. Nevertheless, when she saw that other girls were attending her village based non-formal school, she was interested and enrolled herself and has started to come to NFE school regularly.

Funding provided by the United States Department of Labor under cooperative agreements E-9-K-2-0048 and E-9-K-4-0005.
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