A shelter can only ever be a beginning. At some point, everyone who passes through has to walk back out into the world, one that may or may not make room for her.

That is the reality the Jaffna Social Action Centre has worked inside since 2001. JSAC runs two shelters, in Jaffna and Mullaitivu, known as Nambikkai Illam which means 'House of Hope.' Unlike a permanent home, these are places of transition: temporary housing, medical care, legal support, and counselling for women who have survived gender-based violence, before they move on to whatever comes next.

The women JSAC supports are young, between 21 and 26, and carrying more than one kind of hardship at once. Unplanned pregnancies, teenage motherhood, domestic violence, separation, single parenthood are among the most prevalent situations. By the time the Post-Shelter Economic Empowerment pilot programme began, most had already left the shelter behind, living in parental homes, marital homes, or on their own, in housing that remained uncertain.

Letting each survivor choose her own road

Where other shelters have built one shared business for everyone, JSAC took the opposite, and a different approach. Rather than a single collective enterprise, fourteen survivors were supported to start businesses of their own choosing, from sewing and tailoring, to herbal products, food production, and goat rearing. Fourteen different ideas, fourteen different roads out.

The Institute for Social Business ran a four-day training covering the basics: planning a business, keeping financial records, and core entrepreneurship skills, followed later by a session on digital marketing. The course wasn't built around any single trade, and it was delivered in Tamil, something survivors said made all the difference in how well they could understand and take it all in.

This was all a part of the vision and support of the Government of Canada funded, ‘Ensuring Justice for Victim-Survivors of SGBV in Sri Lanka,’ and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with UNFPA Sri Lanka

What held, and what didn't

Not every road held. By the end of the pilot, seven of the fourteen businesses had closed. A village grocery shop couldn't survive next to an established competitor. A cluster of sewing businesses, started too close together, ended up competing for the same small pool of customers. One survivor, working from a remote location, simply couldn't reach enough buyers to keep going. Then Cyclone Ditwah struck, and two livestock businesses, already struggling without enough guidance on animal care and disease management, had to close as well.

That left five businesses standing. But among them, real success. Three survivors, all running individual tailoring and sewing businesses, saw significant income growth; one of them now takes orders from international clients and for weddings, well beyond the boundaries of her village market. Four more made steady, moderate progress in tailoring and small-scale food production. Whatever the outcome for their businesses, every single survivor reported something that mattered just as much: a real rise in confidence, and in their sense of what they were capable of building.

Where the model needs to grow

The businesses that survived had markets to sell into, and support that kept showing up after training ended. The ones that closed usually didn't, hemmed in by competitors, cut off by distance, or missing the technical guidance to keep livestock alive through a bad season. Closing that gap means guided market linkages for sewing and retail, consistent veterinary support for livestock, and stronger footing across the board in order management and simple bookkeeping.

Livelihood and wellbeing were never separate here, either. Several survivors still need ongoing psychosocial and family support to keep their confidence steady. Even the strongest business, now stitching for international clients, will need help scaling further, while the smaller food and herbal ventures need packaging, labelling, and food safety support to earn a wider market's trust.

Fourteen women took fourteen different roads out of a shelter that could only ever be temporary. Some of those roads closed, but could pave way for new ideas. For the women still walking them, stitching, cooking, building something of their own, the direction they're heading in was never really in question.