Everystory Sri Lanka is a feminist storytelling and knowledge-sharing collective based in Sri Lanka and working across South Asia.

This is our flagship project: Stories of Sri Lankan Women. Through this work, we aim to gather as many stories as possible of inspirational Sri Lankan women born in the 20th and 21st century whose lives, work, and experience have and have been shaped by our social, political, and cultural contexts. At this stage, we intend to create a compendium of Sri Lankan women’s stories drawing out synergies across places and contexts, spotlighting on catalytic moments, and exploring where and how we can tell feminist histories.

About the Work

In October 2021, we launched the first thirty stories collected through this work to the public. The collection, development, publishing, and launching of these stories have all been made possible by the generous support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. We are proud to present into the public domain the first thirty stories from the Stories of Sri Lankan Women project.

The women featured in this first phase are diverse, and each has her own compelling journey to share. We intentionally chose to highlight stories of women currently living and based in Sri Lanka or who have been for a greater portion of their lives. The stories span across generations, industries, experiences, race, ethnicity, religion, and historical contexts. It is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of any kind, but rather, a glimpse of the phenomenal herstories that exist.

Through this mailing list, we will share with you the stories from the first phase of our work as they are concurrently released on our social media accounts.

You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn (where you can find tri-lingual summaries of each of the stories as well) and our Medium page.

The unheard story of Sri Lanka’s Operatic Nightingale -Kishani Jayasinghe | by Everystory Sri Lanka | Mar, 2022 | Medium — everystorysrilanka.medium.com

 “I champion strong women, their vision and their fire. I think there is nothing else like it. Strong women are the bedrock of any society and if and when we work together, there is nothing in the world we cannot achieve. Once that fire starts inside, combined with that unquenchable and unbreakable bright spirit that makes every person unique, we are unstoppable. Strong, compassionate and brave women are the foundation of any home. I learned that from my mother. She is fearless. I like to think she taught me well”

-Kishani Jayasinghe (International Opera Singer)

සිහින නොසෙයූ දිරිය ගැහැණියක් -පුෂ්පා රම්‍යානි ද සොයිසා | by Everystory Sri Lanka | Mar, 2022 | Medium — everystorysrilanka.medium.com

"මා ජනප්‍රිය වූයේ හුදෙක් මගේ රාජකාරි නිසා පමණක් නොව, සමාජ හා පොදු සේවා කටයුතු සඳහා වූ කැපවීම තුළිනි. මම සාමාන්‍ය කාන්තාවක්. මිනිස්සුන්ට උදව් කරන්න වැඩ කරන මේ රටේ බොහොම සාමාන්‍ය කාන්තාවක්. එච්චරයි "

-පුෂ්පා රම්‍යානි ද සොයිසා (ජාතික පුහුණු කිරීමේ හෙද නිලධාරිනිය  - ශ්‍රී ලංකා ජාතික රෝහල)

The Feminist Voice in Parliment: Dr Harini Amarasuriya | by Everystory Sri Lanka | Apr, 2022 | Medium — everystorysrilanka.medium.com

“I really believe in the ultimate goodness of humans. I honestly believe that there’s goodness in everybody and that humans by nature are good. That it is circumstances that make us wicked monsters and make us incredibly cruel to each other. When circumstances change, we can be better than what we are now and also that there is something intrinsically good in us that pulls us back from the worst possible situation. And that, especially about Sri Lanka, however difficult things are, there is a bottom line that we don’t compromise.”

-Hon. Dr Harini Amarasuriya (Member of Parliament and rights activist)

A Legacy of Driving Feminist Consciousness: Dr. Kumari Jayawardena | by Everystory Sri Lanka | Feb, 2022 | Medium — everystorysrilanka.medium.com

“You can have a queen; you can have all sorts of situations where it looks like a woman is at the top. But that doesn’t mean that patriarchy has gone, or that women are not oppressed in terms of wages, employment, society, customs, superstitions”

-Dr. Kumari Jayawardena (Feminist Academic and Activist and Founder: Social Scientists’ Association)

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