📖 जीवन कहानी — Life Story
Kamla Devi never went beyond Class 5 herself — her marriage at 16 ended formal education. But she vowed her village's daughters would not share that fate.
In 2008, with just 6 women and ₹6000 in savings, she started the Jai Mata Di Mahila Mandal — a self-help group that now has 22 members and a corpus of ₹4.2 lakh.
But her greatest achievement is not financial. When she realized that 60% of girls in Mundakhera were dropping out after Class 8 (to help at home or due to early marriage pressure), she started a door-to-door campaign. With help from the school principal and Block Education Officer, she convinced families to re-enroll 47 girls over 4 years. Today, 12 of those girls have graduated college, and 2 have government jobs.
In 2015, she converted a vacant room in the panchayat bhawan into a library with 600+ books (collected via donation drives). Children and adults use it daily.
Kamla Devi refuses any payment for her work. She says: 'Meri beti padhegi tabhi toh mera gaon badlega.'