Making a stand for common goals

Sri Lanka celebrates International Women's Day, 2007 [CAFOD]

CAFOD partner Savisthri (Women for Development Alternatives) works with women from fishing communities, farming villages and tea plantations

Women are encouraged to form small groups of between five and seven members, and hold weekly meetings. Animators come to these meetings, but not every week.

They provide training to raise the women’s awareness of their rights, and help them to organise savings schemes, and income-generating activities such as handicrafts, small-scale retailing or food processing.

Organic home gardening is very popular, and often involves the whole family - a hot and arid backyard is turned into a leafy oasis, producing fruit and vegetables to help feed the family, or bring in a little extra money from sales.

One of the main events organised by Savisthri is International Women’s Day and, in 2007, more than 1,000 women took part in the celebrations at an Open Air Theatre in a Colombo park.

They came from most parts of Sri Lanka (except the far north, which is virtually cut off at present due to the civil war), from the two main ethnic groups, Sinhalese and Tamil, and also from the Muslim minority - all coming together to make a stand for what they all have in common.

Among other issues, they wanted to register a protest about the escalating prices for essential consumer items, which are becoming increasingly unaffordable to the poor.

It’s bad enough for people living in the south of the country, but in the war-torn north and east, mainly due to official restrictions on the transport of goods, prices can be up to ten times what you would pay in Colombo.

A street drama depicted the pressures women face in struggling to put food on the table for their families, and how it can lead to domestic violence.

Another focused on the armed violence of the civil war, in which all too often it is the women who suffer most of all. The event ended with a silent march through the city streets.

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