your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“We are stuck paying off debt, so we can’t even think about a good future.”
Sureshini is 34 and lives in Batticaloa, in the East of Sri Lanka, with her husband, their two daughters aged seven and three, and her father. Her husband works as a laborer, but he doesn’t get regular work, so some days they don’t even have enough money for food. When that happens, they borrow from relatives just so the kids and their grandfather can have their meals.
A few years ago, her husband took a loan of 500,000 rupees to go abroad for work. He hoped it would help them live a better life, but after seven months he had to come back because work was hard to find, and he didn’t make enough to send home. They now pay 20,000 rupees every month for the loan he took. Most of what they earn goes to this, leaving almost nothing for fixing their old house or for the kids’ education.
Sureshini remembers her childhood. She grew up with four siblings, and her father was the only one working. There were days when they skipped meals. When she turned 21, she went abroad to help her parents and sister by sending them money back home. She came back when her mother became very sick, and sadly, she passed away a month later.
Today, they manage by borrowing when work is slow. Even with these challenges, Sureshini thinks about her daughters. She doesn’t want her children to be in a place where they have to skip meals the way she did as a child.
She hopes to repair their house and give them a proper education. She keeps working hard, caring for her kids, and finding ways to manage with what they have, so that her daughters can grow up comfortably. She also dreams of repairing their home and giving them a better future.