"Defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless."
— Isaiah 1:17
Praveen left a career in human resources to serve vulnerable families in Sri Lanka. He and his wife Thavi are raising three young children of their own, and have given themselves to families that others overlook.
Lalana* was one of them. When Praveen first met her, she was raising three children with autism alone — her husband had left, and no school in her area would take the children. Praveen and Thavi gathered volunteers and ran an event for a hundred families like hers. Lalana was paired for the day with a volunteer, a young mother. The volunteer stayed. Eleven years on, the two women are still in each other's lives, and all three children are in a school that can meet their needs.
Millions of children grow up without that kind of support. Praveen and his family are on a mission to change that.
Praveen serves as Implementation Lead with World Without Orphans (WWO), a global movement for a world where every child grows up in a safe, loving family and reaches their full potential. Rather than running programs itself, WWO brings a country's own leaders together and equips them to solve the problem where they live. WWO is active in 55 countries, and new movements are forming in 49 more.
In Sri Lanka, he serves on a national subcommittee on childhood developmental disabilities, appointed by the Ministry of Health, and co-chairs Engage Disability Network Sri Lanka, which equips churches to welcome and support people with disabilities and their families.
He brings the voices of parents like Lalana into national decisions, and equips churches to carry those decisions back to the families they are meant for.
What is learned here does not stay here. Praveen coaches WWO's regional leaders across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, helping what works in one country take root in the next.
Will You Partner With Praveen and Thavi?
Your monthly partnership helps Praveen:
- Keep families together — strengthening families raising children at risk, including those living with disability, so they don't lose the family they have
- Bring children back into a family — reuniting children with their own family where that's possible, and finding another when it isn't
- Equip the church to do both — bringing churches in Sri Lanka and Christian leaders worldwide to the same table to learn from one another, so more children thrive
Praveen serves full-time and is currently $1,000 a month short of the support his family needs. He is looking for twenty partners at $50 a month, or ten at $100.
Would you be one of them? You can become a monthly partner using the form below.
Praveen and Thavi would also love you to walk with them in prayer — write to Praveen at praveen@worldwithoutorphans.org for occasional updates and prayer requests from Sri Lanka.
*Name changed to protect her family's privacy.