Suppiah Solomy
Arayampathy
Sewing Vocational Training

Solomy is a 26 year old Christian mother of two. Solomy’s difficulties started years before the tsunami stuck her village. Typical of many Tamils she are her family were victims of the 1983 ethnic violence. In 1983 her family was forced from the Hill Country and moved to the coastal town of Arayampathy. Since that time they have lived in a small corrugated tin hut that was provided by another NGO. The trauma and stress of the ethnic violence and subsequent relocation and poverty bore heavy upon Solomy’s father who subsequently died in 1986. This adversity forced Solomy’s mother to work making paper bags from recycled cement bags. This laobur intensive work earned their family about 50 Rps per day. To supplement the family income Solomy started cooking food for local school children and was able to earn another 50 Rps a day. (Translates to about 50 Cents a day). The severityof the family poverty had Solomy thinking about removing her son from school so she could work to help the family. It was at this critcal juncture that Solomy was selected to join a SP funded vocational training center. Solomy has learned a sought after skill that has tripled her income, allowed her to support her family and allowed her children to stay in school SP-SL has trained over 200 hundred women like Solomy along the East Coast of Sri Lanka since Oct 2006. The possibilities and future for this young woman and all of the other students have been greatly improved because of the SP-SL Livelihood Project

These centers planned elaborate farewell ceremonies as a way of thanking SP. These centers demonstrated profound gratitude for our involvement in their lives. The gratitude was demonstrated by the overflowing comments and stories that the young girls told to us. These centers put on feasts, testimonies of thanks, dances games and much more. Really, these sewing centers became small communities and many of these centers have developed into long term women's development societies with rotating loan schemes and other such ventures.


Make it a Great day