Survival & Determination

On Boxing Day 2004, she was at her home, situated between the sea and a lagoon in the south-eastern corner of Sri Lanka, enjoying a quiet day with her family.

On hearing the noise, she stepped outside to see what was going on.
“Then I saw the 17 foot wall of water coming towards my house,” she says. Her mother dragged her back into the house and shut the door.

But the immense force of the wave ripped the door from its hinges and pinned Prabuddhika and her mother against a wall, knocking her unconscious. Soon they were floating around their home as it filled with water.

When Prabuddhika regained consciousness, she realised that her mother was in danger of drowning, so she pushed her up on to a ledge and hung on to a rafter. “Throughout this ordeal, I gained the strength to fight on from my mother, who was shouting and begging me to stay alive,” she explains.

Almost exactly a year after the disaster, Prabuddhika, her parents and younger brother were one of 41 families to move into brand new homes at Milleniya village, built thanks to a partnership between CARE, Marks & Spencer and MAS Holdings, one of the Sri Lankan companies that supplies clothes to the retailer.

Still today Prabuddhika, an office worker at MAS Holdings’ Unichela factory, is afraid of the ocean and deep waters. Yet her determination to move on is tremendous. “I made a pledge to myself after the tsunami to become a greater individual than I was before,” she explains. Since the disaster, she has enrolled on a diploma programme and passed two stages.

“The Milleniya housing project has given me a new lease of life,” says Prabuddhika. “I really enjoy the calm environment and I’m an active member of the village welfare committee.”

As well as the new homes, we’ve built a community centre, library, three village shops, a medical centre and a children’s playground in Milleniya.
Elsewhere, in Akurala and Kahawa villages, CARE and Marks & Spencer completed a further 30 homes and helped launch or restart 40 small businesses such as dress-making and fish-selling.

Donations of £275,000 from Marks & Spencer and £81,000 from the Disasters Emergency Committee made the reconstruction of these three villages possible, benefiting more than 350 people like Prabuddhika.