your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“My children cry from hunger. I go to the shop, get food on credit, and give it to them.”
Thevosi is 42 and lives in the East of Sri Lanka with her three daughters, aged 16, 13, and seven. Her husband died two years ago after kidney disease and diabetes left him bedridden for about a year. Since then, she’s been the only one bringing money in.
She works three jobs to keep things going. She herds 10 goats on contract, which pays 5,000 a month, but only for six months of the year. She also cuts grass and runs a roasted corn shop on Kovai Road. None of it adds up to enough.
There are days when the family doesn’t have food. When her daughters cry from hunger, she walks to the local shop, buys groceries on credit, and feeds them. She doesn’t wait because she can’t bear to see them starving.
All three of her daughters are in school. Thevosi makes sure it stays that way. “It’s the effort I put in that is keeping them there,” she says. She’s also raised an oldest daughter, who has since married and moved out, which means the four of them at home now are just Thevosi and the three younger girls. And everything that needs done for the children, she does.
What Thevosi wants for her daughters is clear. She wants them to study, finish school, and get good jobs, government jobs if they can. That’s what she’s working towards by doing three jobs at a time. She wants to see them live a good life in the future.
