Sumaya Akter Shova is a peer educator of the HERessentials Program who has been working in the factory for 3.5 years. She is from Rajshahi district. Sumaya has been married for 4 years and her husband also works here in this factory.
Sumaya got married right after she passed her SSC exam (10th grade). Her in-laws did not allow her to study further in spite of her husband’s wish. As her husband was not so educated, her in-laws did not want their daughter in law study further. Even, her in-laws don’t support her working outside the home. They want her to take the baby and handle domestic work. But she does not want to become a mother right now. She said-
“I want to ensure a safe and secure future for my child. So, I want to work more and save. Because, as expenses for everything are rising, rearing up children is not too easy these days. I don’t want them to suffer as I did. So, I will conceive whenever I will be ready to take all the responsibility properly.”
She shared her experience with training,
“I won’t lie, I got nervous the first time knowing that we had to receive training with Tabs. But gradually, I felt that it was the best way to learn. And my coworkers are also very interested to know about this training with tabs. I shared with them whatever I learned from the training.”
She seemed to be very satisfied with the training. She informed,
“This training changed my way of thinking. Previously, I used to use clothes during my menstruation. But after this training, I got to know how much important to take care of my menstrual health as a woman. I started using sanitary pads after the training as my trainers instructed me to. Moreover, we could not save much although we both are working. My husband was not willing to save. But after the third training, I learned how to avoid some unnecessary expenses and convince him to save. Now we make a budget as soon as we get our salary and cut off all the extra expenses. We saved a good amount after the training and bought two cows with that saving as we started to save one’s full salary and keep another’s for the monthly expenses.”
Sumaya shared with us about the future planning that she wanted to conceive after her job and make good savings. She wants to build a farm which will be her source of income after leaving the job. After receiving the training, she started to save a good amount. Now she can discuss anything with her husband which was not that easy before the training as she got also tempered. Now, both of them are leading a happy life with better understanding and effective future planning.
