Ticket to ride

Every morning, Khagisara Regmi of Birendranagar Municipality in Charkune of Surkhet district wakes before the rooster’s crow. She loads up her bicycle with 120 kilograms of various vegetables and cycles seven or so kilometres, delivering fresh produce door-to-door to many urban homes. 

Khagisara’s husband died six years ago and she was left to provide for herself and her four children. She grew and sold vegetables, but with a bad leg, it was difficult for her to carry around her vegetables. She barely managed to shoulder 30 kilograms and her income was never enough to provide a modest living for her family. Two years ago, things changed for Khagisara — she received a bicycle. Through the UNDP's Micro Enterprise Development Programme (MEDEP), a joint poverty alleviation initiative of the Government of Nepal and UNDP funded by donors including Australia and the UK, she received entrepreneurship training, along with a bicycle and crates to carry vegetables. 

“The bicycle changed my life,” said Khagisara. “I can now carry up to 120 kg. My income has risen by at least three-fold.”

Through MEDEP, Khagisara also learned to make best use of the resources available to her, and hence, she also started purchasing goods in Birendranagar for sale back in her village.

“Due to our poverty, my eldest daughter had to drop out of school,” she said. “But now, she has resumed her studies and all my other children too can go to school.”

Khagisara is just one of 55 women from two adjoining settlements, who are catalysing their local economies and creating vital linkages between urban and rural regions, with support from MEDEP. They collect fresh vegetables in their villages, thus ensuring a market for rural producers, and provide a consistent supply to urban residents. The changes in their lifestyles, socio-political empowerment, and the local economy are manifold.

Nanda Sunar, a Dalit woman, recounted the self-confidence and social prestige that comes with being able to ride a bicycle. “Coming from a poor Dalit family, I could not even think of owning a bicycle,” she said. “Being able to ride gives me immense confidence.” This same confidence reverberates through the women who leave Charkune every morning on their bicycles, wheels squeaking and bells ringing.

The introduction of bicycles has not only empowered women and augmented their income but has also granted them a newfound freedom of mobility—an aspect often constrained for many women in Nepali society, deeply entrenched in patriarchal norms.

According to Ramji Neupane, UNDP's national program manager for the project, this initiative showcases the potential for integrating carbon-free transportation, such as bicycles, into business practices. Indeed, the impact of this initiative has proven to be multidimensional, yielding positive outcomes in pollution control, fostering a clean environment, promoting economic empowerment, and contributing to strides in gender equality.

MEDEP, implemented since 1998, has been supporting poor families with starting their own enterprises and creating employment opportunities in rural areas, targeting women and socially-excluded groups. Over the last 16 years, MEDEP has created 73,000 micro-entrepreneurs, out of whom 69 percent are women, 23 percent Dalits and 36 percent indigenous nationalities.