#Act of Kindness

Community rallies around young mom to help her get back on her feet after devastating injury

Radhika Wijesekera
August 4, 2024

^{Image – From the Files}

Thirty-eight-year-old Wasanthi^[1] is a loving wife, and mother of a 10 year old son. She met with a horific road accident last year, in which it became necessary to amputate her entire right leg to save her life.

She is the life and soul of her little family, and a much-loved member of the village community; a community that found it difficult to accept that she will be confined to a life on crutches, with limited mobility and restricted levels of physical activity.

The people of Polpithigama, where she lives, decided to raise enough money to fund an artificial limb for her use. They found out that a good-quality German prosthetic would cost around Rs. 870,000; an exorbitant sum for Wasanthi and her family to bear.

A quick calculation showed them their goal :- gathering 200 people who would be willing to contribute Rs. 5,000 each to the pot.

The villagers got to work to find these 200 individuals, raising awareness with the use of flyers, social media posts, a loudspeaker on a tuktuk and the good ol’ word-of-mouth method. Within the first week of starting their campaign, they had collected Rs. 500,000 with the help of friends and villagers in the area.

In a mere 3 weeks, a total of Rs. 1.2 million was crowdsourced in this way, which was more than enough to purchase the prosthetic. After a few weeks of therapy and guidance, Wasanthi was back on her feet like she used to be, going about her daily routine as though nothing had changed. The remining funds were used to settle the debt accumulated by her husband during this difficult period in their lives. These funds also went towards the maintenance of the prosthetic in the immediate future.

Apart from the villagers, the temple and schools in the area also provided their support while funds came in from Sri Lankans residing overseas as well.

Sri Lankans are well known for their kindness and generosity, and this is a wonderful story of how a community helped a member of their own to literally get back on to her feet again.

^[1] The names of individuals and places have been changed to maintain privacy.

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