your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“He left me and the children six years ago. Now I take care of the children myself.”
Jessika lives in a small village in Batticaloa in the East of Sri Lanka with her two children, a girl in year four and a boy in year one. Her husband left them six years ago, and since then she’s been raising both kids on her own.
Day to day, she relies on the little money her husband sends them and on food her younger brother provides. It isn’t a lot, but she makes it stretch. When she needs to use the toilet, she walks next door to her younger sister’s house, since there isn’t one at home.
Jessika had a chance to take a job at a shop not long ago. Someone called her and offered her the work. She turned it down because it would have meant she couldn’t be there to manage look after her children. She made that choice herself and she stands by it. Right now, her children’s schooling is the thing she’s putting first.
She handles everything in the house alone. She tracks what money comes in, keeps the children fed, and makes sure they get to their lessons. Her brother’s food support and her husband’s weekly money are what the family runs on, and she holds it all together from one week to the next.
What Jessika wants most is for her children to study well and be okay. To have a better future and a good life.