North East Network celebrated Women Farmer’s Day on the occasion of International Day of Rural Women on the 15th of October 2020, in Dhemaji and Golaghat Districts of Assam. Our Community Mobilisers from both the districts organized this exhibition showcasing indigenous herbal and medicinal plants; with the theme in mind “Building rural women’s resilience in the wake of COVID-19”, which aims at strengthening the livelihoods of rural women and their wellbeing.
This day is celebrated to recognize “the critical role and contributions of rural women, including indigenous women in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.”
Women also play an important role in agriculture, health, and nutrition and rural development etc. But, the challenges they face in their day to day lives in terms of accessing facilities like education, health care, employment, and many more are still not met or compromised by the authorities. In fact, the pandemic has only made it worse for them to get access to these facilities
Since Covid-19 has put pressure on all individuals to take extra care of their health; boosting one’s immunity to prevent oneself from being infected is the need of the hour. One way to do so is by using herbal medicines or by medicinal plants, but the practice of using it is gradually losing its importance and tradition in the modern era. One of the reasons can be because of lack of knowledge or possible extinction of the species and also with time and age people are no longer succumbed to the traditional way of healing.
The initiative of this the exhibition was to conduct, to disseminate knowledge regarding the benefits of indigenous herbal plants that are easily accessible in this region and the programme raised awareness to 70 participants, including men and women from local communities, students, and teachers from Dhemaji and Golaghat districts. In this world filled with a lot of chemical intake, we hope that this exhibition have opened the eyes of the people to go green and organic for a healthier lifestyle that mother nature has already blessed us with.
