The secret to my success? Self-confidence." - Sarojini
Sarojini a 45-year-old entrepreneur from Sri Lanka, has transformed her life and the lives of others through self-confidence and sheer determination. Her business processes coconut husks into chips, which are then made into bricks and exported to China for use in the building industry.
Sarojini’s journey began in the grip of extreme poverty. Her mother, struggling to raise four children, could barely make ends meet. To contribute, Sarojini started making small packets out of newspapers by moonlight after school and sold them to groundnut vendors. Eventually, she dropped out of school to support her family full-time. She married and had three children, but tragedy struck when her husband had an accident that left him in a coma for four months. With no income, Sarojini pawned her house and jewellery but soon fell into debt. She lost her home and her family was forced to relocate.
Determined to start over, Sarojini took a job preparing cement blocks, which introduced her to the building industry. As her husband slowly recovered, his work as a coconut transporter revealed an opportunity to produce coconut chips. Seeing potential, the couple secured a charitable grant to buy a coconut chip-making machine. However, they needed more funding to maintain and house the machine. Sarojini tried for five months to secure a loan, but bank managers turned her down repeatedly.
Undeterred, Sarojini tried one last time. Recognising Sarojini’s entrepreneurial spirit and her role in employing other women, a female bank manager approved the loan. With the funds, Sarojini expanded her business, building a shed for her machinery and purchasing more coconut husks. With additional support and training from CARE and its partner, Chrysalis, Sarojini constructed a permanent structure for her growing business.
“They couldn’t understand what I had been through,” says Sarojini. “The secret to my success now? Self-confidence. My advice to banks now is to employ more women.”
Today, Sarojini employs seven women, all of whom have faced significant challenges in their lives. Her enterprise not only supports her own family but also empowers other women, enabling them to feed and educate their children. Sarojini’s ambition is to expand her business to produce end products from coconut chips, creating more jobs for women in her community.
Women like Sarojini are leading the fight to end poverty. For her family, for her community.