Trisha Silvester, the co-founder of Sreepur Village, a charity in rural Bangladesh that has provided refuge to thousands of women and children facing poverty and hardship, has died aged 79. Her daughter, in an obituary, described her as a single mother, businesswoman and long-serving charity chair whose talent for connecting people helped transform lives.
Early inspiration and founding of Sreepur Village
In the 1970s, as a young mother, Silvester watched a television programme about Sandra Simpson, a Canadian woman who had established orphanages in Vietnam and Bangladesh. She met Simpson and travelled with her in 1977 to Dhaka, where Simpson had set up an orphanage in a large house. This visit changed the course of Silvester's life. That year, she started a charity, Families for Children (UK), to raise funds for the project.
At the same orphanage, Silvester met two young girls, Sukuri and Hasina, aged two and four. She eventually brought them to the UK and adopted them, completing the family she had long hoped for alongside her two biological sons.
Partnership and expansion
In 1981, Pat Kerr, a British Airways flight attendant, visited the orphanage and felt the same sense of responsibility. Kerr took leave to volunteer, and she and Silvester formed a partnership with a bold vision. Raising money to buy land, they founded Sreepur Village in 1989. The purpose-built village, two hours north of Dhaka, not only gives sanctuary to destitute families—accommodating some 350 people at any one time—but also provides vocational training for mothers and education for children.
Some funds to support the village came from the sale in the UK of Christmas cards made by women in the community for a living wage, an initiative supported by the Guardian over several years. Silvester was appointed MBE in 2001. She served as the charity's chair of trustees for more than 40 years, until 2019, and made regular visits from her home in south London. The organisation, known in Bangladesh as Shishu Polli Plus, continues to thrive.
Personal life and legacy
Born in Bromley, Silvester was the daughter of Gordon Thompson, an insurance broker, and Doreen (née Walter), a homemaker. She attended Bromley High School and enjoyed pursuits that gave her pleasure throughout her life: books, dogs, friendships and a liking for people who were fun and a little mischievous.
In 1966, she married Michael Silvester, whose PhD studies in chemistry took them to the US and Canada, then back to London. After three failed pregnancies, she feared she might never have children, but she went on to have two sons, with her adopted sisters joining the family in 1980. Her marriage ended in 1983.
Silvester studied for an MBA at Greenwich University in the late 1990s and ran two early digital businesses, Answercall Limited and Computer Literacy Limited, all while raising her family on her own. She broadened the horizons of others with empathy and intelligence, gathering a large circle of friends around the world whom her family thought of as her 'warrior women'. She could be direct, sometimes formidable, but the force behind it was a belief that people should be helped into opportunity.
Silvester is survived by her four children and eight grandchildren.
