Think pink Sri Lanka - women driving for women

After two years of being unable to visit Think Pink in Sri Lanka due to the global pandemic the long wait was finally over!
For Founder, Mary Storrie and our mum drivers it was an emotional reunion. Mary was able to talk to women drivers directly and reflect on their crisis management during the pandemic.
How did they survive? Especially during lockdowns, when as daily wage earners, they lost their income overnight for significant and crippling lengths of time?
Learning from these past experiences, a post Covid strategy has been discussed and planned together, to prevent a drivers income being abruptly halted when disaster strikes, including illness in the family and accidents.
As head of households it is vital that driver mums are able to continue to provide for their families.
As a daily wage earner they are in a precarious position, especially as these mums have limited safety nets to fall back on.
Changing this traditional status of tuk tuk drivers from daily wage earner to employed status will enable job security, prevent financial poverty and along with it improve social mobility for our single parent mums.
Alongside savings groups which will provide education on the importance of saving for a rainy day and opportunities to take out low risk, low interest loans, women drivers supporting each each other is a key element of this model.
This new model will offer flexible, meaningful and mentored employment to professionalise from the precariousness of daily wage earner to the stability of regular paid employment.
It will be a challenging journey for these women to recover from the full impact of the pandemic.
With your continued support we can continue to help them to build a more secure and resilIent future for their families and future generations.
We wish them a healthier and safer 2022!