In celebration of International Women's Day 2020 we are marking women's achievement across the Group. 

Dipa Baidya has been working as the Line Health Worker at Duncan Brother's Shumshernugger Tea Estate Hospital, Moulvibazar for the last 24 years and has achieved success both in her professional and personal life. She always aspired to work for her community, but it was not until after her marriage that Dipa found out more about community support work and was inspired to create a healthy and better life for the people of Shumshernugger Tea Estate.

During her long-standing professional journey, she has had to adopt multiple strategies to bring change in such a conservative community; One of those is to provide access to communities to talk on such sensitive issues which she expressed saying,

“acceptance among the communities is a must and I believe it is only possible by being polite and sincere to work and accepting cooperation from colleagues”.

Always responsible and committed to her work, her day starts at 6.30am, managing a team that looks after around 700 people from 100 households, visiting on average 17 worker houses a day.  During her visits, she talks to the estate audiences about personal and environmental hygiene, family planning, immunisation, deworming and awareness of drinking safe water etc.

Dipa did not find her work easy at the beginning. It has taken time to be accepted among the estate population but her hard work has paid off. They are now more aware about personal and environmental health and hygiene, maternal health and pre-and post-natal complications and how to resolve them. It’s not only the health, hygiene and birth control issues that have improved, the community now feel comfortable to discuss other social and family issues with her to find solutions. Dipa feels proud and delighted that she has been able to contribute to these changes. 

The commitment Dipa shows to her community is unrivaled, but it’s not the job, rather her hardworking attitude and sincerity to the community that has made Dipa so very valuable and respected.

As her uniform, she wears a white Saree with green border for her work; culturally a white Saree symbolizes an 'unfortunate' (widow) women, but Dipa finds her strength and courage when she wears the uniform.