Implementing these new ideas, Saleha began rearing goats and cows and growing vegetables. Gradually, things began to look up as her homestead farm flourished under her care and labour. She steadily expanded her farm and the economic benefits were as good as RDRS had promised.

The Integrated Homestead Farming Project is now finished, but it proved to be a self-sustaining project, no longer needing constant intervention or outside support; RDRS sowed the seeds and the Group Members are reaping the harvest, and will do so for many years to come.

Today Saleha's homestead has a busy air about it. She has three cows, two goats, bean plants, many ducks and chickens. Under the programme, she received training in grafting and so the branches of her boroi (local plum) tree are heavily laden with large hybrid fruit which will fetch a good price in the market. She even developed a small nursery where she grows saplings of economically valuable trees - neem, mango, jackfruit and others which she sells, investing the returns in more saplings.

Saleha was also trained in bee-keeping, and now has two boxes of the honey-makers, whose output she bottles. According to Saleha, she doesn't even go to the market to sell the honey. Instead, "the people come to my doorstep to buy my fresh honey. This is a very good and steady source of income."

All of this she has done on her own, using just the tools of the training. She did not even take a loan from the micro-credit programme of RDRS. "I don't need a loan," she says happily, "I generate enough income for myself and my sons."

Being able to send her sons to school (and not out to work as child labourers as she feared when they were born) and building a new mud house for the family, Saleha is the perfect image of sustainable women's development.