Zewude Habtawaldi Mrs.Zewude is 50 years old and she is the mother of five children. She lives in East shoa zone,Adama woreda in Didimtu Kebele. Naturally she is one of the hero women and who is a talentive as well as productive woman by utilizing her God’s given potential. Before she becomes the beneficiary of SGDA, she was poor enough and felt under pressure of life.

For survival of her children and herself, she used to participate on labor work with small earning which is not enough to care for her children and unable to fulfill their basic needs like shelter, clothing, medication and consumption. Despite in such shortage means of income she was envisage further to participate on small petty trade like selling of vegetables by bringing from farms even though the prices for her vegetable products were cheap that was not able to improve her economic status as she also lack capacity building of market linkage. Her life was full of failure as she was unable to cope up with her shortage of income resulting her to be lebeled as a extreme poor in the community of the kebele she lives in during screening. The old house she was living in with her family was leaking rain during the wet season which she and her family would never forget in their lives. She always remember how much life was bitter for her and her children. More over her husband commited suicide in the midst of such difficulty that made the condition worst. During such critical time, Save Generation Development Association come to Didimtu kebele and started its intervention in women economic empowerment.

Based on the severity of her situation, the kebele Administration screened her to become beneficiary of the SGDA. SGDA provides her with capacity building about basic concept of entrepreneurship, saving and credit. With seed money, SGDA issued 500 birr to her to make her able to engage IGA. In deed she bought one calf and a sheep then continues fattening them and start the business cycle of selling and fattening and able to improve her economic status. Surprisingly she made 7000 birr profit in her first transaction that gave her the hope to continue with her effort and support her children by fulfilling their basic needs. She now sends her children to school and able to provide full care for them.

Taking SGDA support as turning point she diversified her means of income by participating farming activity like Haricot been and teff cultivation. She sells some of the product and started to construct modern house against the odds one is expected from such initiative. During her house’s construction, she incredibly joined the hard work physically with the laborers to fully build it. She also managed to fully furnish the house to make it comfortable to live in and safe. Life is changed for her and family from extremely poor status to become a home owner. She increased the number of oxen to the extent of 7 as the result hard work. Still she has vision to scale up the level of her income by participating poultry in large size and engage market linkage that boost her economic status. Beyond her effort she played to change her life, Mrs. Zewude also plays great role by practicing social responsibility like by heading women groups in social affairs, claim and exercise the right of women.