OUR STORY

Far from home — yet never alone

Every big idea begins with one person’s story. Ours begins with a young woman named Watshala.

A suitcase and a thousand questions

Three years ago, Watshala landed in Israel carrying a single suitcase, a phone full of family photos, and a quiet hope that the years ahead would be worth the goodbye she had just said at home in Sri Lanka.

She had left behind her mother, her village, the sound of her own language in the street — and, hardest of all, a loving husband and two school-age children who wait for her and miss her every single day.

But the first months were harder than anyone had warned her. Forms she couldn’t read. Bus stops she couldn’t pronounce. A pay slip she didn’t understand and was too afraid to question.

“I wasn’t afraid of hard work,” Watshala later said. “I was afraid of being invisible.”

A conversation that changed everything

One day, that loneliness met a listening ear. Watshala crossed paths with Elias Hanna, a businessman who had spent decades working alongside foreign-worker communities in Israel.

As Watshala spoke, he realized something that wouldn’t let him rest: her story wasn’t one story. It was tens of thousands of them.

Building a home, not just a website

So Elias set out to build something he wished Watshala had found on her very first day. Not just an app. A home.

A place where the news arrives in your own language. Where you can learn Hebrew at your own pace, understand your rights as a worker, find an event, sell something, ask a question, and get an honest answer from people who actually understand your life.

That place is LankaConnect — built with care, rooted in lived experience, and offered to the community always for free.

We can’t bring Sri Lanka closer. But we can make sure that here, in Israel, you are never far from help, from information, or from your own people.

This is your platform

Today, LankaConnect is growing into the digital home of the Sri Lankan community in Israel — tens of thousands strong.

Welcome home. Welcome to LankaConnect.