your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“My daughter was selected and needed things for campus but we couldn’t buy them for her. I cried that day.”
Thilakawathi lives in Anuradhapura with her husband and their three children. The family of five runs on whatever casual work her husband can find, which isn’t always much. There’s no fixed income, and when work dries up, there’s nothing coming in.
Two of the children are studying away from home. Their 23-year-old daughter at the Peradeniya University, and their 17-year-old son is studying in school away from home. Keeping them there costs money that has to be found before they leave each time. The youngest, who’s three and a half, is about to start preschool, which will add another cost to manage.
Thilakawathi’s husband takes whatever casual labour and farming work he can find. When something comes up that needs money, like school fees or supplies, they look ahead and try to find work in time to cover it. It doesn’t always work out. There have been days when a class or an activity had to be dropped because the money simply wasn’t there.
Once, their daughter couldn’t sit her A/L exam because of it. Another time, she needed things for campus and they couldn’t buy them. Thilakawathi says she cried on both of those days. Food runs short too. Some days they barely scrape together what the children need, and when they can’t, they go without.
There’s no one to turn to for help. Thilakawathi says everyone around them is in the same position, so they figure it out on their own or they don’t. She’s been doing something about the income side of things though. She’s completed training to make a local snack food and wants to turn that into a small business.
She’s been told she’ll get support to get it started. It isn’t running yet, but the training is done and the plan is there. She’s holding on to the hope when both older children finish their studies. She wants them to build good lives and to be happy, and that’s what she’s working toward.