Supporting Sri Lanka’s War Widows During the Pandemic

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic first reached Sri Lanka, Salesian

missionaries have been mobilizing to assist those who are most vulnerable to its impacts.

In a country that already has suffered prolonged civil war, two devastating tsunamis in 13 years, and a deadly dengue crisis, their task isn’t easy. While poverty rates have been falling in the years since the conflict ended in 2009, many Sri Lankans remain excluded from the kinds of opportunities that can lead to sustainable employment and increased income. And more than 90,000 of them are women from the country’s eastern and northern provinces who lost their husbands in the war.