Daring to move forward - Story of a persistent mother


Periakka belongs to a bonded labour family involved in brick-making business. Her two children, one daughter and son were also brought-up in the same environment. The eldest daughter married and got settled in the same community at the age of 14 years. So Periakka had lot of hopes on her son and she wanted him to settle outside the bonded labour work and was encouraging him to study. 

When Karthik, her son was 12 years he became sick and was diagnosed of HIV. It was a shocking news to Periakka, as the only thing she knew about HIV was it caused immediate death and further tests upon her revealed she is not positive. Later she came to know that HIV has spread to her son through negligence in treatment setting. 

With all these burden she came to know about treatment  for HIV and met other young people like her son Karthik. She regained hope and encouraged him to continue education. But Karthik discontinued his studies as he developed side effects for ARV and could not cope with it effectively. 

Periakka was silent, but always urged that he needs to move out of the bonded work. Her motivation encouraged Karthik to learn DTP (Photoshop and Coreldraw designing) with the support from Buds of Christ and got himself employed in a photo-studio. Currently he is working in a studio and has been able to move out of the brick-making community by settling the family debt and is an inspiration to many other like him to move forward from their current challenging situation.


We salute Periakka for standing by our Buds leader karthik and encouraging him to be what he wants to be.

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