I describe my life journey in a simple famous quote from Forest Gump movie, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get”. Growing up in a low-income family with five children in a small village that still struggled with electricity and employment issues made me never have a dream to achieve what I have achieved today. I would never dare to imagine myself, a small boy whose father is a cycle rickshaw’s driver, going to college in the state’s capital, earning my Master degree in Australia, and participating in a fellowship program in the USA as right now. If someone asks me, “what made you whom you are today?” Unhesitatingly, I will reply “my mother”. She made me believe there were three things that will make the life better: good education, women empowered, and entrepreneurship.
Having a good education is the first lesson I learned from the way my parents raised me. It was a tough love though. When I was in Elementary School, I remembered when my score slipped for one semester and did not get the first and second rank at the class, instead I only got the third, and I was grounded for one month. I was so upset and sad at that time. But I am grateful having parents who have always supported my education despite of their limitedness. I still remembered when I was in the fifth grade, I cried a lot asking my parents to buy me a text book, and they could not afford to buy it for me. But the next day, I was surprised with my mom coming to school giving me the book. Later I knew that my father spent all money he got that morning to buy me the book. These moments have got stoned in my heart and made me aware of how important it is to have a good education, especially for my parents, and then motivated me to be who I am now. As a result, my family’s belief about education has shaped my passion to pursue my Bachelor and Master degree in Education.
My mother is a true housewife. Though she only holds elementary school education, she had a talent in managing family finance. But with elementary school certificate at hand, it was difficult for her to find a good job. This was worsened because the only skill she had was cooking. Nevertheless, my mother was not the only one having this problem. There are many other mothers and women who do not have skills, and are left with one option only that of being a housewife. As a child, I imagined that life would be better if my mother had skills and good work. This would help my father to pay the bills and feed the big family.I believe empowering women means empowering the family, society and the country too. Though my country has a women empowerment ministry, its works are not fully satisfying. The access to support and trainings to empower women like my mom is limited and pricy. This reality drives me to learn and work in empowering women to go hand in hand with them exploring their best and make it comes true.
I have found that even without higher education, entrepreneurship is one of the best ways to be self-sufficient and improve community livelihood.Since I was a child, my parents and people around me, believed and planted in me the ideas that the only way to be successful is to be a government official. After failing the government exams twice, I was forced to find an alternative way to success. Reading stories of successful people like Bill Gates, Richard Bronson, and others, I began to shift my belief that success could be found through entrepreneurship, rather than being a government official.
