A timid Girl Student Emerged as an Adibashi Women Leader


Bharoti Pahan is an Adibashi (ethnic minority group) girl born in the village of Modhail of Patnitola Upazilla under Naogaon district in the year 1990. She started her education in the school of her village. After completion of school education she got admitted at Krishnopur College, Naogaon in the XI class. After completion of XII class she got admitted at Rajshahi College for higher education. This college is about 120 kilometer from her house. She comes of a very poor family. She is very high ambitious and bears a good quality results in all the educational examination. Her father is paralyzed for long time but her mother is very committed to continue her education even by selling labor. Poverty is always with the lives of their family members. She is continuing her study with hard struggle. She is from marginalized and disadvantaged section of people in Bangladesh and has many barriers from the community and other sections of people as ethnic minority group. This group faces violence and exploitation in different ways by the main stream people. She has seen and affected from his childhood. From this an emotion has been created to raise voice to make her society upgraded. She started communication with the people of their community, students, and social leaders and came forward to act as activist towards the development of their community.

Considering her potentially she has come to the limelight as an activist to provide leadership to her society for breaking the barriers. IED identified this Bharoti Pahan and provide facilitation support since 2011 to develop the leadership quality. By this time she has become very active and dynamic and involved in different forums, networks and Adibashi student council. She has extended her hands to provide support to the students and youths of her society to play active role to establish their rights, create important position and mobilize facilities for the people of that community.

Some of her important roles played are mentioned below:

  • She played very active role to form Adibashi women forum at Naogaon
  • Maintains regular communication with Adibashi students, leaders and civil society members
  • Participates in the human chain, mass gathering, rally and press conference where she raises voice in favor of the community
  • She provided support to enroll two drop out students in the Naogaon Government college for higher education
  • She maintains involvement with Adibashi Student Council

Now she has become one of the leaders in the Adibashi community and will play more active role in future towards establishing the rights of the community.