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President fetes Kheri tribal woman with Nari Shakti Award
When President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the ‘Nari Shakti Award’ on Arti Rana, a tribal woman of Kheri, on Tuesday, to mark the International Women’s Day, she became a role model for all Kheri women
When President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the ‘Nari Shakti Award’ on Arti Rana, a tribal woman of Kheri, on Tuesday, to mark the International Women’s Day, she became a role model for all Kheri women.
Beaming with joy and confidence, Rana accepted the award as a great motivation to work for women empowerment. Rana, 46, who has studied till Class 8 in her village school, belongs to the Tharu tribe populating the Terai region around Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. However, her limited schooling did not restrict her flight of creativity.
Umesh Kumar Singh, project officer of Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP), said, “Arti Rana is deft at making handicraft items including carpets, baskets, bags, decoration pieces, etc, and her artistic skills and creativity appealed to everyone.”
But initially, Arti faced lots of inconvenience to earn livelihood through her handicraft skills owing to marketing issues.
Singh said “about 15 years back, Arti Rana’s work was covered under ITDP under which she was imparted proper training, provided tool-kits and her handicraft skills were refined. Later, under the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), she was assigned to head a self-help group Gautam Self-employment engaging over a dozen other women members.”
Promoted and motivated, Arti Rana’s skill and arts soared, bringing her a number of awards, including Rani Laxmibai Bravery Award at the Tharu Mahotsava, Gram Swaraj Award, etc.
Rana now provides employment to hundreds of other tribal women in her community through self-help groups and her products have been selected for one district one product (ODOP) programme.
However, the biggest moment in her life came a few days back when she was intimated by the district authorities that she had been selected for Nari Shakti Award.
Arti Rana, a resident of remote tribal area of Chandan Chowki, adjacent to the Nepal border, was one among the 29 women shortlisted for the award.
Kheri district magistrate Mahendra Bahadur Singh, chief development officer (CDO) Anil Singh and ITDP project officer Umesh Kumar Singh congratulated Arti Rana on getting the prestigious award.
