It started in the Monaragala High Court.
I was leading the evidence of a little girl — a long, painful day that kept the court sitting until four in the evening. As we finished, her mother came to me quietly and asked whether we could take her evidence that same day too. The judge saw her speaking to me and asked what was wrong.
She earned a daily wage, she said. Every time she came to court she borrowed about 4,000 rupees from the village loan shark — money to leave one child at a relative's house with food, and to cover the journey and the day's meals. If she had to come back another day, she would never get out from under the debt.
The judge and I finished her evidence that day. And then we started a small fund — for the mothers and children who came to court with nothing to eat and no way home.
That fund was the first Bhoomi.
The loan shark was there. The bank was not. I've been building the system that should have been there ever since — credit, insurance, settlement, identity — infrastructure that shows up by default, so it never again depends on two exhausted people deciding to care.
— Gayan Lakpriya Perera, founder, Bhoomi Network
