They said she couldn't...

They said she couldn’t do it. When Goltaz told her friends and family that she wanted to attend a course World Vision was offering on textiles and tailoring, they said she was too stupid and that she would never be accepting into the training program. She got in.

They said she couldn’t do it. When she completed the World Vision course, she announced that she was starting her own business. Again, they told Goltaz – who at this point could not even read or write her own name – that she would never succeed. She has.

With her husband unable to work due to an injury he received in the 1991 Cyclone, her family’s situation was dire. Desperate and determined, Goltaz set out on a door-to-door marketing campaign among her neighbours telling them that now that she was trained, it was their responsibility to bring their tailoring needs to her. And they did.

Today, Goltaz has 22 women working for her out of two locations. Her elaborate saris are in demand in urban centres like Chittagong and Dhaka, and she has just received her first international order for $7,000 worth of product to Germany. When we visited her, she was busy making the passport arrangements for her family. Her children are in school and her husband is running a delivery and taxi business with two brand-new vehicles she has bought him. And what's the best part of her new situation? She knows that if her children ever get sick, she knows that she will now be able to buy them medicine.

Her hope for each employee is that they will run their own businesses one day and be every bit as successful as her. She sees her business as an extension of World Vision’s training programs. In fact, the day after we saw her, she was planning to take three women to the bank to help them each secure their first micro-loan.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the day was courtesy of Goltaz’s father, a traditional-looking man who had spend most of our visit solemnly standing in a corner. When asked what he thought of his daughter’s success, he began to cry (prompting tears from everyone else in the room, from us, to Goltaz, to our translators): You raise your children and you have dreams for them. But you never dream this big. I am so proud of her.