Abstract
Poverty in rural Malaysia remains unresolved and contributes 3.4% to the whole poverty figure in Malaysia. As 50% of the rural folks are women, they also serve as a significant human capital to fight the long lost battle of poverty. In a society where men are the breadwinner of the household, women can be given an equal opportunity to play an active role to develop the society alongside the men folks. More importantly, rural women have the potential to offer better quality of life for their family by providing extra income and monetary support, especially whenever their husbands are not able to work. In reality, the issue cannot be resolved easily as there are many factors that stand in the way and prevent the resolutions to be implemented. In this regard, this paper describes a model that has been used to resolve such issues in rural Malaysia. The model utilizes a synergistic effort between an academic institution, an NGO that governs the rural women folks and a private trading company that sells the finished products. The project was conducted in a rural area of Selangor and had been in operation since the end of 2013. As the project shows positive outcome, similar projects could be replicated in other rural parts of Malaysia. The project captures the influence of the NGO's programs upon rural women entrepreneurship and how a private trading company can facilitate the development of a community. As a result, the project reveals that self-income generating activities can be an important contributing factor to empower rural women folks in eradicating poverty in Malaysia.