When Jashoda Das' husband died unexpectedly, she was left with little money, no land, and three children to raise on her own in rural India. Her youngest son was just 3 years old. She worried they would be kicked off the government land the family was squatting on."I lived in fear," Das told Refinery29 through a translator.In the years that followed, Das struggled to stretch her small wages as a day laborer to cover basic costs like food. Her son eventually dropped out of school and began traveling to find work for months at a time.She married her daughters off at the young ages of 14 and 16 because she was unable to afford to take care of them any longer. India accounts for one-third of all child marriages around the world, according to UNICEF , and poverty like Das' family experienced is an overwhelming factor.And Das was far from alone: India is home to 15 million poor, rural, landless families, according to Landesa , a Seattle-based nonprofit that advocates for land rights for poor families in developing countries across the globe.Then a local health worker came and told Das about a program that would grant her land of her own. In February 2014, she received 0.008 acres of homestead land — an area similar in size to some micro-apartments — in the village of Laxmipur. Now, she has a house and a small garden where she grows pumpkins, leafy greens, and other vegetables."It’s perfect for me," she said. "I have a safe place to reside."It isn't unusual to see such large dividends from such a small piece of land, advocates say. Land rights, the nonprofit believes, is a key factor in the fight to end extreme poverty — a major plank of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by world leaders at the start of this year's United Nations General Assembly.