I am Usni Subaideen from Sainthamaruthu which is located in Ampara District, am one of the survivors of the tsunami devastation in December 2004. I was 7 years old at that time. I lost my father when I was an infant and my mother was struggling to educate me as a single parent when the whole of the Eastern province was hit by the tsunami and left thousands of people dead and homeless. Loss of livelihood made all to depend on welfare support.

It was during this time that many mothers were approached by two Social workers offering assistance to feed, clothe and educate their children. I am told that The Ceylon Moor Ladies Union from Colombo had come forward to facilitate the education and welfare of a number of surviving children with the contribution of Islamic Foundation of Toronto. In addition to the educational and welfare expenses given to my mother, a stipend of Rs. 500.- was deposited into our account to be used for higher studies in future.

I was among the first batch of students who received this great support throughout my school life and was able to complete my Primary and secondary education successfully, after which I have chosen to study for the Higher National Diploma in Information Technology at SLIATE which took 2.5 years for completion. After that I completed my internship successfully at an IT service providing company. By this time, I had a responsibility to take care of my mom who is not very well, her care givers and myself and joined a company and worked as an IT support engineer. After two years I joined as an infrastructure Analyst at HCLTECH in Colombo simultaneously I opted to continue my degree programme BIT at University of Moratuwa.

In 2024 I became a fully-fledged IT Engineer, Alhamdulillah! I express my heartfelt gratitude to the founders of IFT for their timely assistance to support the widows and guardians of many child victims of the devastating tsunami and enriching our lives with education which is the best a child can have for the future. My special thanks to the CMLU for visiting us all the way from Colombo together with the IFT occasionally and befriending us.

My sincere gratitude to our program supervisors in Ampara, Aunties Ameena and Rozana for their unstinted commitment and journey along with us mentoring us like our parents to be what we are today.
My ardent wish is to work in a foreign country and build up my career, attend to my post graduate studies in Artificial Intelligence and take care of my family as well.
Insha Allah when I am well established, I will strive to give back to society through CMLU where many needy children are taken care of.

May Almighty Allah Bless us All