SRI LANKA: Livelihood Gives Women Way to Cope with Disabilities

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

PADAWIYA, Sri Lanka, Jun 18 2002 (IPS) - In addition to grinding poverty, Hettihami Chandrawathie has to endure the pain of her son’s illness, one that stunts growth.

The still-to-be-diagnosed illness that afflicts 15-year-old Kamal Eranda, who lives in this poor hamlet in Sri Lanka’s eastern dry zone region, has resulted in his having a face of a 10-year-old and an emaciated body of an 8-year-old. He also cannot talk, walk and has little comprehension of the world around him.

“He has been like this since birth. We took him to all the doctors here and in Colombo but no one could tell us what is exactly wrong with him,” says Chandrawathie, wiping off a tear as she gently rubs Eranda’s brow.

But were it not for the Association of Women and Disabilities (AWD), Chandrawathie admits that her plight would have been worse. This non-governmental organisation (NGO), based in the nearby north-central Anuradhapura district, has helped Chandrawathie earn income through vegetable cultivation.

“When we first came here, Chandrawathie asked for help financially so that she could stay at home and look after Eranda, and at the same time do some work. She suggested growing vegetables,” says Narayanagedera Kamalawathi, founder-president of the association and herself a disabled person.

The AWD has also come to the rescue of other families with disabled kin in Padawiya, about 260 kilometres east of Colombo, where agriculture is the main source of income.

AWD’s efforts are geared toward women. It has provided loans or seed capital of 5,000 rupees (about 53 U.S. dollars) each to 77 women in Padawiya village, out of a total of 250 women who are disabled or who have children with disabilities.

“In addition to helping disabled women, we also help women whose children are disabled,” says Palagasinghe Nirosha, an AWD project officer.

Every week, she visits some 77 recipients of AWD assistance in Padawiya to monitor the self-employment projects.

According to national figures, eight percent of Sri Lanka’s 19.5 million people has some form of disability. However, the percentage of people with disabilities in Padawiya and its 3,000-odd families is higher than the national average.

“Most people here have some form of disability. People are traumatised by the war. Who knows … maybe the war may have had some impact on the people,” Nirosha explains.

Over the past two decades, villagers have lived through regular reminders of this country’s ethnic conflict, where the Tamil Tigers have been waging a separatist war with government troops. The guns in this conflict have fallen silent since December, when the Tigers and the government agreed to embark on a peace process.

One survey in this village revealed that the disabled include the mute, the deaf, the blind and many who are crippled.

AWD founder Kamalawathi is determined to help them with the same passion that drove her to fight her own battles with disability.

Born with polio, the plucky young woman took to wheelchair racing and soon became a champion, winning all her events in Colombo. Overseas, she won gold at Japanese and Hong Kong events and a gold and silver in Indonesia for the 1,500 metre and 5,000 metre races.

She then got a job at the state-run gem corporation, where climbing up three or four floors on crutches daily became a painful ordeal. But this provoked her into pursuing a mission – helping women affected by disability in Sri Lanka.

“While there are several organisations helping women, there was no leadership given to disabled women and their families until we came along,” says Kamalawathi.

After her association was formed in 1995, with Swedish and Canadian assistance, it began helping women with disabilities in the Anuradhapura.

The pattern that the AWD established since then – providing loans to women to pursue self-employment projects – is being promoted in Padawiya, too.

The loans are not repaid to the AWD but to small village committees that in turn dole out loans to the rest of the 250 women to set up self-employment projects, says Nirosha. “Since women can’t go out to work as they have to care for a child with disabilities, we help them to earn some money at home.”

“All the loans we have taken from the AWD are paid back to this committee which in turn gives loans to others at one percent interest. We have regular meetings and consider the needs of the affected families,” adds Thimbiripolarachchige Senadheera, who heads one of the small village committees.

Senadheera himself is one of the beneficiaries of this programme. The 23-year-old, who was born with deformed feet, received a 5,000-rupee loan from AWD to set up a carpenter’s shop. Its income helps him take care of his ailing mother.

Currently, the AWD is planning to expand its work in the more war-affected regions of the country, including the northern Vavuniya district.

“Like many of the villages in Anuradhapura or Padiwiya, I have visited many disabled women in Vavuniya. The situation there is pretty bad and needs our help,” says Kamalawathie.