Sri Lanka is one of the world’s top exporters of tea. It’s picked by women whose ancestors came from southern India and who live and work on isolated plantations, often in poor conditions. Their children are given limited access to higher education. But in a remote hillside plantation in Kandaloya, a group of girls have become the first in their estate to go to university.

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean southwest of the Bay of Bengal and southeast of the Arabian Sea. It is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait.