About Founder
Nileema Mishra, hails from a middle class family from a small village called, “Bahadarpur”. As a small girl, what was great about her was her sensitivity and understanding of the situation. She was observing the condition of women, farmers, children and village itself around her. She could sense the pain of the society and that is how little Nileema Mishra at the age of just 13 decided to develop her village. She made up her mind to work hard for the upliftment of her village at the cost of her own personal life. She completed her schooling in Bahadarpur and later her graduation from Dhule and shifted to Pune University for her master’s degree in Psychology. It was not that easy for her to cope up but, with her fighting spirit she could make it a success. She could have chosen a better job in city and could have lived a luxurious life but she denied that and persuaded her dream to go back to her village and work. As she was not experienced with the village development, she opted to work with great social scientist Dr. S. S. Kalbag at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal. Nileema worked for eight years there, on his concept of rural development through education. There she realized that the problems of villages are numerous. Neither unionization nor a confrontational movement was a remedy. She wanted to go at the root level of the problem so as to find the sustainable solution, without imposing grand ideas of development.
Having handful of experience in village development, Nileema came back in the year 2000 and set up an organization called, Bhagini Nivedita Gramin Vigyan Niketan, meaning Rural Science Centre, at Bahadarpur. With her inspiring ideology of rural development, she soon attracted a team of energetic dedicated associates with faith in her vision. The organization is treated by these participants as their own instrument to help themselves rather than an alien body doing them a favour. In the context of rural development Nileema feels that the concept of eliminating poverty of rural people needs a drastic revision. Government schemes of subsidizing Below Poverty Line (BPL) families create mentality of free-loading and do not encourage them to join work force. They feel that they have the right to claim the hand-outs from various government schemes. This expectation of income without work is the single largest hurdle in attaining sustainable development. Nileema is working hard to change this mindset. It is a long-term and difficult process in development. Every programme, Project or activity run by BNGVN has been evolved out of needs put forth Nileema. She has tried her best to find the solutions. While finding solutions, it was and it is usual to be under pressure arranging finances as per the requirements. Though she struggles to make funds available, she does not let any needy go empty handed. At times this creates more pressure on her and her team.
During initial days she encouraged women to establish Self Help Groups but women were reluctant due to their personal past experiences with such private group. Nileema had to strive hard to motivate them and get their misconceptions clear. The movement which started with few SHGs in Bahadarpur, today has reached to more than 2000 groups. She did not just stopped with this, she encouraged women to make eatable items and then exhibit them too. Women were not ready and were hesitant. But Nileema was very firm and at one point stern to tell them to withdraw her interventions for their growth. This made a huge impact on Though this appears that the journey was of success only, it is not the truth. She had to face few failures too. One such failure is a dairy project. This happened due to the shortcomings in a government scheme. Nileema had funded a milk collection centre and provided work to jobless youth. After 6 months a milking cow stopped producing milk. It then became uneconomic for poor farmers to feed and maintain this livestock. The project thus collapsed after the milk production stopped. But Nileema is not the one who would give up. Recently she has started milk collection centre at BNGVN office and planning to start the dairy project again as this would enable many to earn their livelihood. Every project of the organization would make the person self sustained. Nileema being a follower of Gandhji, realized the need of making whole village self sustained. To make it happen it was necessary to bring all the villagers on the same platform to make them understand their responsibility towards development of their own village. The first problem she could notice was of hygiene of the village and to ensure hygiene of private and public areas, she took up a project to construct 500 toilets within 15 months. Every time she made people independent by lending loan at reasonable rate of interest so that the work would lead to development than charity. She used innovation while constructing public toilets and the concept of “Gappa Sandas” came into existence. Now she has taken up an oath to make Bahadarpur a model village in real terms. To begin with she motivated villagers to get together to discuss and solve their problems democratically. The meetings of the elected village committee have taken the form of public meetings attended by the entire village. The women also participate actively in these meetings. This is known as “Gram Sabha”. Nileema has empowered Gramsabha by giving them rights to recommend an applicant for the assistance from Revolving fund and Gram nidhi. This has enhanced the participation by the community and ownership of the project by the community.
Every day new need props up and Nileema is all set to find the solution to it. She contacts her donors for funds, explains them the need and the concept of work and just begins her work with her team mates. Over the course of the last ten years since the inception of BNGVN, Nileema has faced a number of challenges - administrative, ideological and financial - but has stood firm by her convictions. Her dedication and commitment could get her strong support from organizations like, Caring Friends, Gajanan Maharaj Sanstha, Lupin Foundation, Let’z Dream, AFC Foundation and so on and so forth. Great supporters like Dr. Jagannath Wani, Mr. Rameshbahi Kacholia, Mr. Nimeshbhai and others are her backbones. Nileema has a vision of self sustained village and she is working with all her zeal. She needs a strong support of donors who could assure the continuity of the projects till its sustainability so that she can simply focus on the concepts and the implementation without worrying about finances!!
In the year 2011, world has taken a note of her tremendous work and she has been awarded a prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award for emerging leadership, which is known as Nobel Price of Asia. Eminent personalitie like Mother Terres, Dr. Kiran Bedi have won this award and today Nileema is sharing a platform with them. Though today she is getting lot of media attention, she tries her level best to balance between her work and publicity she gets. She never craved for the publicity but today her work has got a worldwide recognition. But still she is struggling relentlessly for the thousands of poor. She looks forward for the day when the society will not need any Social Organization (NGO). She dreams of self sustained society........
The story of this simple girl who could dream high not for her but for the society is on its half way..... Still a long way to go.......
