your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“My daughter is studying hard to have a better life, but I don’t have money to help her.”
Saranya lives in Batticaloa, in the East of Sri Lanka, with her husband Krishnakumar and their four children. They have three daughters and a son. The eldest is in 10th grade, the second is in 7th grade, the third is in 4th grade, and the youngest boy is in nursery.
Krishnakumar does daily labour, and that’s the family’s only income. What he earns changes from day to day, and Saranya doesn’t do paid work outside the home. She manages the household and keeps track of what the children need for school. It’s a lot to keep up with on an income that isn’t steady.
One of the harder things the family deals with is that they don’t have a toilet at home. They use the nearby forest, and there are animals in there. It’s something Saranya has mentioned as a real concern for the family.
When it comes to school, Saranya and Krishnakumar save carefully to cover tuition for their eldest daughter, which costs 2,000 rupees a month. The younger children aren’t in tuition yet because there isn’t enough money to send them all. Saranya wants to change that. Her third daughter is in 4th grade and working hard at her studies, and Saranya talks about her with clear pride. School supplies are another thing the family stretches to cover, though the school does help with some of it.
Two years ago, Saranya lost her mother. Her mother had a stroke and was unwell for several months before she passed. Saranya feels that loss in the day-to-day work of raising her children. She’s doing it without the support she expected to have.
Saranya didn’t finish school herself, and neither did Krishnakumar. That’s exactly why getting the children through school matters so much to them. She wants all four of her children to study well and get to a good place in life.