The fabulous Asha Well

Yesterday Lesley, Angeline and I spent the day with another amazing nun – Sister Placida. Among the many projects she runs is something she named New Beginnings. She had been working in the Colombo slums which sound worse even than Atthidiya in the old days – people living in tiny shacks with just a shelf where the women and children slept and all their goods underneath. The men slept in the road. They had no cooking facilities so they bought food in plastic bags – no real family life at all. When asked why they lived like this, she says they always said they had no choice. She insisted that there is always a choice and started to take small groups out into the villages, to show them that there is plenty of space in other parts of the country and that a different life would be possible. She established a group of families who were willing to explore this idea further, and worked with them for many months, helping them to create a sense of community and a different set of values. She raised the money to buy some land in a village and in 2007 9 families made the move away from their life in Colombo. For the first 6 months they all lived in the only property on that piece of land, while they helped local builders to build each family a house. One of the reasons the village is underpopulated is lack of water – and the families found that they had 3 natural springs on the land. They approached Asha Trust for funding to build a well – which we did a couple of years ago. All the villagers benefit from the water – the families had said from the outset that the whole village would drink from this even to the last drop.
Talking to the families was truly extraordinary. It was clear that their lives had been truly transformed. One mother told me that when she brought her first baby home, in Colombo, she arrived from the hospital to find their mud up to her hips, following one of the regular floods. Her second baby was born in the village, and she said words could not express how happy she is in their new home. Another woman said that before she entered her new home, she ran around the outside several times, unable to believe that all this was for her family. They have found work, and they are all growing vegetables, fruit t rees and even coconut on their plots. They had no idea about food growing – and Sister has stories about how amazed they were when finding that a seed could grow into a plant which would then produce so much.
Sister has done this with two groups in two different villages now – 19 families in total, and has another 8 families ready to move as soon as she has raised the money to build their houses.
I feel so privileged to know these amazing women . Sister Placida’s entrepreneurship and courage is truly inspirational.
Radhika