In summer 2008, Sri Lankan Aid will be offering our first educational project. Aimed at providing engaging learning enrichment for children in underfunded schools, Leap Sri Lanka will bring together local and international youth to run programming for students in grades 5-8. The Leap learning camps will feature science and art activities and an active, participatory approach to learning.
Read more about Leap Sri Lanka here.
We have a new web design so the content is a little sparse at the moment.
The town of Kallar, about 40 km south of Batticaloa city, was badly hit by the 2004 tsunami. As the wave crashed over the low, sandy barrier and into the lagoon behind, bridges and causeways were washed away, leaving Kallar and many towns in the area without access to major transportation routes. Pressures from internal relocation camps and the ongoing war stretched limited local resources even further.
In 2007 our group visited a rural primary school in the town of Kallar. We found classroom space to be limited and in disrepair, with a shortage of adequate permanent buildings to meet the basic needs of daily use. In consultation with the school principal and several teachers, we agreed to restore and enlarge one derelict classroom building. Over the course of two weeks, we worked alongside skilled local laborers to replace the floor and roof of the old building, as well as enlarging the basic structure. Using concrete bricks made at a cottage just up the road, and mixing cement and mortar by hand at the site, we had the walls nearly completed by early August.
Work continued on the school building after our team returned to North America, and by fall the new classroom was complete and ready to use. The new building featured a heat-resistant tile roof, refurbished cement floor, and a secure, enclosed addition where supplies and valuables could be locked up at the end of the day. With a classroom divider wall keeping noise from other classes from disrupting lessons, the new building increases both the quantity and quality of space available for teachers and students.
Sri Lankan Aid is a student run non-profit based out of the US and Canada that formed after the 2004 tsunami and works to serve the most disenfranchised areas of Sri Lanka. What started as a few friends from Harvard, UCLA, New Mexico, and Sonoma State donating their time and labor following the disaster has grown into a team of students and recent graduates from around the globe implementing projects in the areas of education, housing, water access, health, and economic development.
This summer our projects included: building an addition onto a primary school in Kallar that took on around 200 new students this year who had been displaced by violence in the east; coordinating the construction of a new community center in a refugee village outside the town of Vaccarai; and distributing durable medical equipment such as defibrillators, dopplers, suture kits, glucosometers, and blood pressure monitors to hospitals in Batticaloa, Chenkalady, and Vallachennai.
Much of this work is documented in the upcoming film ‘Lions and Tigers,’ filmed by group member Cory Hoover, which follows our group’s experience and explores the disconnect between on-the-ground impacts of war in Sri Lanka and perceptions there of.
Our efforts are constantly expanding and we are now looking to establish a summer camp for kids, which will incorporate after school educational activities, supplemental in-class activities, workshops to help teachers share resources and design creative techniques, and a week-long project with a ceremony to mark its completion. We are also working to develop a micro-credit program along the lines of a Grameen Bank-type model, as well as a health worker network that would serve and monitor the basic medical needs of rural villages in the east and connect those disenfranchised populations with existing medical services in larger towns and cities.
This winter we will be returning to Sri Lanka, where we hope to start laying the ground work for these new programs, continue to distribute more durable medical equipment, and begin lining up more collaborative projects with local communities.
Your help is key to all this work. Our efforts are entirely made possible by small donations from our friends, families, and concerned members of the community. We make sure these monies go directly to serving the population of Sri Lanka by covering all of our own airfare and administrative costs out of pocket, and by administering every dollar of aid we bring in ourselves, on the ground in Sri Lanka.
Please use this website as a resource to learn a bit more about our past accomplishments, and how you can play a pivotal role in our work. The website is an ongoing project, and content is continuously being made available. We welcome all correspondence and media inquiries, so feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.