Mintu Mani Saikia lives along with his mother in the Nagaon district of Assam. Without any family support and a dependent mother, life has been very challenging to Mintu. Like most of the youth, he also wanted to complete his education but circumstances led him to drop out and start finding a source of livelihood. Later, he started working as a tailor. Moreover, the COVID-19 situation made his situation bad to worse.
The District Coordinator reached out to him for the Digital Sarthak programme. Mintu is a person who is keen to learn, and this ensured that he had sound knowledge of using smartphone and social media. Mintu had the potential as well as the matched the requirements of becoming a Digital Sarthak as he was in search of a sustainable livelihood and also had good knowledge about smartphones and social media. Hence, he was identified as one of the Digital Sarhtaks from Nagaon district.
Under the Digital Sarthak programme, he is providing training to 100 women entrepreneurs in his region and also providing digital services to the community using the printer and smartphone. The programme has provided much-needed entrepreneurial start-up support by providing a stipend from training and equipment to earn from digital services. Mintu is confident of building in this support and take this journey forward by running the centre successfully and helping his community.