Day 10 - Wed 29 Sep

Yesterday was a big disappointment to us.  Despite having paid to have the roof repaired, it was still leaking in 6 separate places which meant that classes were interrupted as soon as the rain came through. And lights couldn’t be switched on due to the danger of electrocution meaning it was too dark to continue lessons.  So a priority for us now is to act and get the roof either repaired properly and to a standard that will withstand the harsh weather conditions we’ve been experiencing or to get it completely replaced – likely to be an expensive job and one we haven’t budgeted for.

It hadn’t been all bad.  Earlier yesterday we had met the new parish priest as we believe it’s important to get the support of community leaders no matter what denomination they are.  One idea which we might be able to develop further is using the church hall adjacent to the school for evening classes but we need to develop a plan to make this a reality.

Whilst meeting the priest we were handed the annual report prepared by the group which runs the medical clinic which made fascinating reading.  We provide them with 90% of the costs to run the clinic: in 2009, the clinic had over 2,600 registered patients, treated just over 2,000 people during the 12 month period and was seeing an average of 50 patients on each Friday it was open.  As mentioned earlier, the clinic tends to be overshadowed by some of the other work we do but in terms of reach into the community, it’s pretty amazing.

We had also visited the music shop where we got a quote to provide the school with extra instruments seeing as the band has proven to be very popular with the school children.  Hopefully there will be 8 extra places in the band by the end of the week.

On Wednesday morning, we had a similarly productive and interesting day too.  We wanted to explore what opportunities there might be for older pupils and adults who are less academically inclined to pursue courses in things like engineering and automotive repairs.  So after a quick Google search we headed off just 10 minutes down the road to the Ceylon German Technical Training Institute.  The set-up of this organisation was impressive and was on a huge scale; each year they take in 350 new full time students for 3 yr courses having whittled down the 5,000 original applicants.  Perhaps more usefully, they also offer part-time and evening courses for students with fewer academic qualifications.  This a longer term proposition but we will try and arrange for the Village School to send some students aged 14 and up to see the training facility as it might inspire them to be engineers in the future.

Next up was something we’d only learnt about this morning.  Ratmalana is also home to the Ceylon School for the Deaf & Blind and we’d been told that they were always looking for additional support.  It was set up in 1912 but now spreads across 3 campuses: 2 in Ratmalana – one for deaf students and one for the blindand another up in Jaffna.  It is an impressive set up and looks after over 500 pupils by providing education, vocational training, food and lodging. We met the Principal of the Deaf school and the manager of all three sites and explored areas where we might be able to help. These could include providing educational materials, clothing, art supplies and even developing sporting links between this school and our own Village School.  More work to follow up on but one which offers exciting new opportunities.