Farida makes tea for her customers. All photos by K.E. Morgan. All photos © CARE.

The tearoom is actually more of a stall perched precariously on bamboo stilts at the edge of the highway. It is a humble, open-air enterprise about the size of a station wagon. It has walls of wood and a low tin ceiling. It was not designed to accommodate tall people, but the view from Farida's place makes up for the stooping.

To the south, customers look out over the verdant inland sea of rice paddies, seemingly stretching all the way to the Bay of Bengal. The view to the west is similar, miles of swaying green fields reaching out to neighboring Myanmar. There even is a view looking down: slits in the floor afford a view of still more rice paddies below.

This is Farida's world. It is vastly different from the one she inhabited six years ago, when she was homeless, jobless and nearly helpless, she says.

Cows share the view from Farida's tearoom.

Farida, who does not have a last name, is a graduate of CARE's Rural Maintenance Program (RMP). RMP offers women the opportunity to earn income by working on a road-maintenance crew. Each crew is responsible for upkeep and repairs on the secondary roads that make up the rural transportation network.

During the course of the four-year program, women gain new life skills, as well as steady work and income and a savings account upon graduation. Many of the women use these individual savings accounts to start small businesses, as Farida did.

But RMP is more than the sum of its parts. Since it began 1985, it has become a journey of empowerment for approximately 45,000 women in Bangladesh who have moved from destitution to self-reliance.

"Widowed, divorced or abandoned, the women often come to the project shy and submissive," says Faruque Sarkar, coordinator for RMP. "But just as quickly as they learn to maintain the earthen roads that link tens of thousands of communities across Bangladesh's countryside, they learn to speak up for themselves and they learn that they have the power and ability to craft their own futures."

Farida laughs with her customers as she makes tea.

"I started this shop with the money I saved with RMP," Farida says, taking a kettle off the wood-burning stove. "Now I have twice as much money in the bank." She also has a second kettle, a rare luxury in rural Bangladesh.

She pours the dark, steaming liquid in a small, chipped porcelain cup, off-white on the outside, the color of a brown egg on the inside. The cup has seen its share of black tea. Farida adds sweetened condensed milk and hands the cup, no saucer, to a man who has just come through the open doorway. Customers sit at a wood plank table on a plank bench, both worn smooth by the elbows, forearms and seats of countless others.

The days when Farida had no home, no job and no friends are long past. Today, she is happy and self-sufficient.

"I have no regrets working for RMP," says Farida, taking the equivalent of two cents from the man. "They taught me many things. I know banking. I know how to take care of my family. I am saving money. I know many things. Before CARE, I had nothing. Not many people would even talk to me."

Now locals and travelers alike talk with Farida, learn about her experiences and, of course, drink her tea. She and her family are among the tens of thousands that enjoy the positive, long-term impact of programs like RMP.

"RMP is a very exciting project to work on because it's not just about the 45,000 women who have completed the program, or the 36,000 that are participating today," Sarkar says. "It's about all of the children who now have a chance for a better future because their mother could provide for them. In every sense, she paved the way to a brighter future."