Thiyagarasa Sakunthalathevi, 43 year old single mother living with her 02 sons and a daughter in Nithiyanagar. Her husband has died in kidney disease 15 years before. From that day she has taken the breadwinner role as single caregiver for her 03 children. Now, she has become good example for women’s effort but the path she came across being single parent is cannot be described in words. Earlier, she went for labour work to brought-up her children. Then she bought some cows for income generation. Now, she is having 03 cows and earning income from it
She has joined the SHG named “Vembu”. Now she is president of the group and she is leading the group with huge expectation for improved living of her family and other members’ family. As the result, she had taken loan of LKR 8,000 and bought a goat for LKR 8,600 within the village itself. She is looking after the goat with more expectation to expand the goat farming. While she is caring for her family’s development, she is caring for improving the living condition of others’ life. For that purpose, she is discussing about necessity to develop sustainable livelihoods and also gave some suggestions to achieve it. “I thought SHG is only for savings and lending but now only I realized it is something more than that. Now we have developed peer relationship. Which is helpful to share our suffering and getting support for others to solve it. SHG has changed my life. It has increased my passion to help others to overcome their problems. I wish to continue my support to others to my best.” says sakunthalathevi
Now, husband and wife share the family responsibility with improved understanding and harmony at the family level. We can observe that the parents teach and discipline the same in recognizing women’s rights. The children are also supporting the mother in all her work including the agriculture activities. Valarmathy has set the best example to become a women farmer in her village.