Who we are

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About Us

Janarukula is a Sinhala term. It means Support Provider to the Community. Janarukula provides support to Sri Lanka poor women who feel the brunt of poverty, to identify their own problems and to design and implement their own projects and programs to solve these problems to fulfill their own needs.

Janarukula is founded by Upali Sumithre and few community leaders who have learned lessons from the traditional community based organizations that they have worked for a longer period of time. These community leaders have evolved the following principals based on the participatory development strategy in providing support to the poverty alleviation programs of the poor women in Sri Lanka

1. The poor women should be the main actors in the efforts to overcome the prevailing poverty in their families and the communities.
2. Thrift and credit should be the back bone activities of any poverty alleviation effort
3. There should be sound operational system where all those involve could meet regularly and conveniently to discuss their problems and evolve solution to them
4. Poverty alleviation efforts of the poor should be directed by the poor for the benefits of the poor without depending on external conditional support.

Based on the above principles Janarukula was promoted as an ongoing participatory development program for the poverty alleviation of the Sri Lankan poor women and their families. It was registered on 16th July 1997 under the Social Services Act. It has its principal office at Galthotamulla Road, Yakkala in Gampaha District in Sri Lanka.

Its objectives are:

1. To facilitate poor communities to examine and discern causes of their poverty and to motivate them to set up and implement projects and programs to find solutions to the problems identified.
2. To promote the formation of community organizations through the participatory development activity to assist them to sustain themselves.
3. To promote linking up of poor communities with government and non-government organizations engaged in poverty alleviation programs.
4. To provide relevant training to poor communities to facilitate exchange of views and experience about ongoing research and documentation.
5. To put in place systems of monitoring documentation, evaluation and revive the projects and programs designed and implemented to achieve targets.

In April 1998 Janarukula received its first foreign funding support from UN Habitat for the purpose of establishing a Women Movement for addressing the problems of rural and urban poor women in Sri Lanka. This funding support paved the way for establishment of Women Development Federation by Janarukula.

With the receipt of funding support from SELAVIP, Janarukula developed its own Housing Development Fund in May 2002. This has become a strong source of strength for Janarukula to explore new avenues to address the overall problems of its target groups. These housing development activities prompted it to build up new partnerships with the local authorities. Its close contacts with Slum Dwellers International (SDI) had been greatly helpful to acquire experience in these areas. Though savings and credit has been its main activity now it has commenced to address the land, shelter, sanitation and community infrastructure issues also. Janarukula has received funding assistance from foreign NGOs such as UN Habitat, SDI, ACHR and SELAVIP.

Its activities in Moratuwa area took a significant stride, as a result of Tsunami in December 2004. It moved very quickly to the assistance of its members in Moratuwa area immediately after the Tsunami. It took action to bring relief not only to its members, but all affected in general. It could provide 50 temporary houses to the affected families at Moratuwa through funds from the Asian Coalition of …… Tsunami affected Families and 50 permanent houses with the assistance of ACHR, Ministry of Urban Development and the Moratuwa Municipal Council and the Women Development Federation. Janarukula is performing its affairs through the following implementation arms promoted by it.

1. Community Housing and Economic Development Public Company
2. Women’s Development Federation

Community Housing & Economic Development Public Company

Community Housing & Economic Development Company is a Public company promoted by Janarukula to implement its thrift and credit program. It was incorporated under the Company’s Act No 7 of 2007, for the purpose of achieving the following objectives. 1. To empower women to participatory develop themselves, their families and their local communities in Sri Lanka.
2. To facilitate members to improve their housing to in order to provide for themselves satisfactory homes and living environments.
3. To improve members thrift and savings ability.
4. To promote and protect the rights of women and children and assist or supply any or all necessities required to uphold such rights.
5. To launch programs for women to improve their spirit of cooperation and unity. Empowering themselves to participatory alleviate their own poverty and poverty of others in their community.
6. To promote suitable income generation projects for the women and help them to develop their lives by giving them proper guidance and access to credit facilities.
7. Rehabilitate mentally and physically handicapped or disable women through education training and providing other assistance.

It is operationalized throughout Sri Lanka through the following cooperatives societies registered under the Cooperative Societies Act as the micro credit arm of the Community Housing & Economic Development Company ( CHED )

1. Kurunegala District Women’s Cooperative Society LTD
2. Nuwara Eliya District Women’s Cooperative Society LTD
3. Gampaha District Women’s Cooperative Society LTd
4. Moratuwa Usaviwaththa Vanitha Shakthi Housing Development Cooperative Society LTD
5. Moratuwa Dandeniwaththa Vantha Shakthi Housing Development Cooperative Society LTD
6. Peliyagoda Poranukotuwattha Vanitha Shakthi housing Development Cooperative Society LTD
7. Halmilwa women’s development cooperative Society Ltd
8. Atawarala women’s development cooperative Society Ltd
9. Bollatha north Thrift and Credit Cooperative Society Ltd
10. Balabowa Thrift and Credit Cooperative Society Ltd
11. Panvila north Thrift and Credit Cooperative Society Ltd
12. Women development service Guaranteed Company

Community Housing & Economic Development Company is a national network of women’s savings and credit groups in rural and urban communities across Sri Lanka. The focus is on total development of communities through the savings and credit programs. It focuses on mobilization of small Women’s Group from the same locality who have reasonable trust in each other to save a fixed amount on a weekly basis. Each group consists of 5 to 15 members. They save Rs. 5 per week. The funds pooled are held by the group leader. Each group should meet once a week at a group member’s house to discuss problems affecting them and collect their weekly savings. Funds so pooled are made available as credit amounting to Rs. 100/= for the needy in the group.

Five or more group leaders meet and jointly form Primary Branches.

Generally a Primary Branch consists of 5 or more groups operating in the same settlements. Primary Branches are mainly focused on the economic up liftmen of members through the Women’s Groups. The members of the Women’ Group will be enrolled as the members of the Primary Branch only if they pass the eligibility test conducted by the Primary Branch. The qualified members should make the following contribution.

Admission fee Rs. 10.00
Value of a share Rs.100.00
Monthly welfare contribution Rs.10.00
Monthly coparsily savings deposit Rs.5.00

Each group is represented by its leader at the Primary Branch. Generally a Primary Branch is established for one settlement.

All primary branches in a district are federated to form a District Cooperative Society as a legal entity registered under the Cooperative Societies Act.

Women’s Development Federation

Women’s Development Federation is a popular movement which networks the entire above mentioned Women’s Groups, Primary branches, District Cooperative Societies. It was promoted by the leaders of all District Cooperative Societies.

ORG Stucture

Our History

It is essential to relate the historical evolution of this Alliance. In Sri Lanka, the support organization not only preceded the federation but was instrumental in its formation too.

Upali, the founder President of Janarukula had been working on issues related to urban poor since 1982. For 15 years, he got associated with a number of organizations, people and issues ranging from fisheries to government housing programme for poor to savings programme for women to overcome problems of money lenders (supported by UN Habitat). The geographical setting of these projects was mainly urban – the nationwide housing programme for poor started from Nigambo and expanded to Colombo; the savings programme for women was started by Upali and his then associate Nandasirigamage in 1990 in 10 settlements of Colombo city with support from UN Habitat. In 1991, this work was spread to rural areas and experiences from Colombo were shared in the villages. One of the biggest achievements of this initiative was at the Halamillwa village in the Kurunegala district where people used to borrow money from moneylenders to make bricks and in case of non‐repayment, the money lender would confiscate all the bricks and get a much higher amount by selling them. The women of this settlement started saving and took loan from their primary branch. In their own words,

‘ we brokethe dalali system; we broke the arrogance of the dalal and created a community system’.

It is this settlement where Miurin, the current president of the federation lived and started this system. Gradually their savings grew and helped them to build houses and toilets. Through this programme, Upali met Miurin and several other women who would eventually lead the federation in Sri Lanka.

The turning point came in 1997 when Upali and his partner split the programme in Colombo. Upali wanted a highly decentralized operation and carried on with that idea in some settlements in Colombo and three districts of Gumpaha, Kurunegala and Noriliya. Janarukula was set up in the same year and even after the UN Habitat programme ended, Janarukula continued supporting the fledgling savings groups. In 1998, some women leaders and Janarukula leadership founded the National Women’s Federation.

Due to paucity of resources, Janarukula wrote to UN Habitat for some support but they had no presence in Sri Lanka, only a regional outfit at Bangkok. Peter Sawn, the head at that time understood their need of setting up office and paying for travel of women leaders etc. They received their first grant of $4000 and started off the journey of this Alliance.