Shanta Neupane had a vision. From Panauti Municipality, in central Nepal, she could see how hard women in the rural forest and farming communities around her worked in their family smallholdings, helping to feed their households. 

But although, like Shanta herself, they were members of community forest user groups, these same women had little voice in their communities, no assets of their own, and received no personal income from their efforts. 

Shanta knew that if these women came together as a cooperative, they could pool their skills and efforts to start producing and selling goods, taking the first steps on a pathway towards their own economic independence and improving their status in the community.