Feed families & rebuild 3000 futures in Sri Lanka

Dear friends and supporters,

Around the world, childcare is shifting away from orphanages and toward families, and Sri Lanka is part of that shift. This update shares recent evidence from the field of what your support makes possible: a family rebuilt after crisis, and children staying in school and at home rather than at risk of separation.

Here, the reasons children enter institutions are rarely about a lack of love, they're about a lack of support. When families face illness, poverty or crisis without a safety net, separation can feel like the only option. Over 10,000 children are still living in institutions in Sri Lanka, and more than 80% of them have a living parent. Poverty separates families; the right support keeps them together.

Two families show what this looks like up close. A few years ago, Sanduni needed major heart surgery, and her three children were at real risk of separation with no one else to care for them. Then their already run-down home was destroyed in an electrical fire, leaving the family with nowhere safe to stay together. Around the same time, another family was pushed into sudden poverty when Sunil gave up his job as a chef to care for his wife, who was suffering from a devastating neurological illness that left her bedridden, no diagnosis, no support, and mounting medical costs. With no money left for school books, his son Tharindu's education was at risk.

With donor support, and with local building expertise, we rebuilt Sanduni's family home from the ground up. In September 2024, Sanduni and her children moved into a safe, new house. Alongside direct family support like this, we continue to back the education that keeps children learning, hopeful, and out of institutions: Vidyalankara School has grown from 3 to 100 children with our support, now with an English activity room and laptops, and we handed out 100 school book packs to keep children like Sachini (11) progressing at school. Tharindu was one of those children too, the school books he received each year, since he was first supported at age 10, were often the difference between going to school and not.

Today, Sanduni's children are thriving: Kasun (17) is doing work experience in a shop, Dilini (15) is studying to become a nurse, and Nadeesha (16) is preparing to train as a police officer. Sanduni herself is fit and well, and, most importantly, her children were never separated.

Tharindu stands tall too. He now proudly holds an NVQ Level 3 certificate as an Air Conditioning Mechanic, is awaiting his A Level results, and is preparing for work while continuing his studies. His father Sunil's words say it best: "Without TFT, our whole family would look very different today."

Because when families stay together, children don't just survive: they grow, they dream, and they believe in their futures. It's stories like these, steady, practical, unglamorous support arriving before a crisis becomes a separation, that this project is built to deliver at scale, for 100 families, 400 children and 3,000 people across Sri Lanka.

With loving kindness,
Lynn, Joel and the TFT Team
Their Future Today