She overcame civil war and dad’s early death to lead a charity pushing human rights for domestic workers
- Hong Kong domestic workers’ charity director Manisha Wijesinghe on growing up in Sri Lanka, her mother’s resilience and her journey to championing human rights
My parents married young. My dad was ground staff for SriLankan Airlines and my mum worked in a bank. When I was born, in Colombo in Sri Lanka in 1987, she left her job to be a stay-at-home mum.
When I was nine months old, my parents and I were involved in a car accident. My dad broke his leg and there was a complication and he passed away. My mum was 21 and a single mother.
Many people came together to support her. She qualified in early education to become a teacher so that she could go to school with me and be there for all my recitals and practice.
All hush-hush
I grew up knowing that I had to say a good goodbye because you didn’t know if you’d see the person again.
At school there would be announcements that something had happened and parents had to come and pick up their kids.
A group of my mum’s friends got together and paid for me to go to a good private school. It was never talked about, it was all hush-hush – you didn’t want to be the welfare kid in school.