Our Impact

Sunati is 33 years old. She lives with her husband and 3 children. Her eldest son, Pranau Baral is 15 years old and has Cerebral Palsy. Pranau requires assistance from his mother for many daily activities which means Sunati’s caring role takes up much of her day.

Sunati struggled with the challenges that the role of caring brought to her life. Unemployed, and isolated from society, she felt very alone whilst caring for Pranau. The family depended entirely on the income that her husband earned through a jewellery shop which he owned.

In 2016, we commenced our first project in the Kathmandu Valley with local partner Self-Help Group for Cerebral Palsy Nepal (SGCP). Sunati was invited to join a newly established carers self-help group which she now attends monthly. She is very happy to be a member of the self-help group as it has enabled her to develop a network of friends, meaning she no longer feels alone. She now has a group of people who understand her situation and with whom she can discuss issues close to her heart.

Through the project, Sunati trained to be a beautician and was placed with a local beauty parlour for employment. They understand her caring responsibilites and allow her to work around them. She even entered Kathmandu’s “Miss Beautician” competition in 2018. Sunati’s plan for the future is to set up her own beauty parlour so she can work for herself and earn a more secure income.

50 year old Golapi is the sole carer for her 25-year old son Sawpon, who has Cerebral Palsy. They live together in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Since Sawpon’s childhood, Golapi has been responsible for assisting Sawpon with everyday tasks such as washing and feeding. As Sawpon has grown, the physical demands of her caring role have become more challenging for Golapi and her own physical health has deteriorated as a result.

As well as the physical challenges Golapi has faced, she has also experienced great challenges to her mental health and emotional wellbeing, finding her caring role exhausting. The financial costs of medication and rehabilitation for her son are costly and at times she worries how the family will afford the ongoing costs. Her sleep became disturbed due to stress and she constantly lived with the thought that, as his mother, she was the only person who could and would take care of Sawpon.

In 2018 we started our work with carers in Bangladesh in partnership with the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD). Golapi was one of the first carers whose life we were able to change.

For the first time in over 20 years, Golapi is seeing light for her future. She has joined her local carers group and regularly attends the group’s meetings where she shares her experiences of caring. Golapi has also benefited from home counselling which has helped reduce the mental stress she has lived with for a long time.

Laxmikanta is 24 years old and cares fulltime for his mother, Soni Nag who is 50 years old.

Until 2015, Laxmikanta was living the life of any other teenager. Living with his mother, he attended college while his mother worked as a cook in a residential school.

In 2015 , his mother changed. She had difficulty sleeping and started collecting rubbish from the street and storing it in their house. She began to neglect her home and the work she had previously enjoyed, and became alienated from her neighbours and the wider community. Laxmikanta dropped out of college and found work as a daily labourer in order to support them both.

Staff working with our partner Ekta in Odisha identified Laxmikanta and Soni as being in need of support. They linked Soni to government and health scheme benefits, which has included an increase in her pension. Soni has been assessed by a psychiatrist who has diagnosed her with schizophrenia. She has now started a regular treatment regime as a result of which, her symptoms have significantly reduced and she is regaining her quality of life.

Laxmikanta was encouraged to join his local carers self-help group. He is a regular attendee at meetings and has learned a great deal about carers’ rights and available government schemes since joining the group.

Since feeling a huge improvement in her health, Soni has become interested in setting up a home-based shop from which she will sell cooked goods. Laxmikanta hopes that when his mother establishes the shop, he will be able to return to education. He had completed his schooling prior to becoming his mother’s carer and now he wants to do Vocational Training so he can become a manufacturer and earn a secure income.

Laxmikanta says he now has more free time to attend social functions since becoming involved with the carers project and that he feels free of his previous worries.