Vocation,Vocation,Vocation!

When we visit Sri Lanka one of the highlights of the trip is our day out with the girls from the orphanage, which we have supported since 2005.  Since 2008 FODAD has supported vocational studies at the orphanage.  The aim is for the children to be able to leave and earn their own livings.  We employ teachers for dress-making, cookery and home economics classes and the girls are doing very well indeed.    

This afternoon Della cut the ribbon to a new cookery classroom.  We then looked at an exhibition of handiwork before Don helped give out the prizes for the best students and we then  watched a wonderful exhibition of dancing.  The money we spend is a really worthwhile investment. 

Admiring the handiwork

Don giving out prizes 

The girls dancing

Looking at the photo album, made by Toby

Another 65th Birthday!

Hot on the heels of my 65^th Birthday, Don and I attended the 65^th Anniversary of the Independence of Sri Lanka.  For the second year running, our school band had been invited to march in the Civic Ceremony.  We did not understand any of the speeches but we were as proud as any of the parents as we watched our small band march by. 

Due to the public holiday, we have not had a chance to visit our school yet but we are eagerly looking forward to seeing all the changes that have been made since we were last here and will be blogging!

Our school band! 

End of Year campaign launched

On December 26th, it will be 8 years since the Asian Tsunami when Della and Don were on the beach in Sri Lanka, and Della was prevented from drowning by a fisherman.

Since then, with the support of so many people, Della and Don and their friends and family have returned to Sri Lanka over 20 times to help the people they met during that awful time.

After 8 years they are still doing what they can and now have a number of projects all of which some of you have helped support and about which you can read at www.fodad.co.uk

Our original aim at the end of this year was to launch an appeal to buy a new boat for the fishermen and we are very fortunate in that Della’s publishing colleagues at ALPSP have already collected over half the money we need to purchase and equip a fishing boat which will help keep the village self- sufficient.  With your help we can reach the remainder of our £1,500 target.

This year, most of us have either experienced or witnessed how nature, in no time at all  can play havoc with peoples' lives and we understand how  difficult it is to make choices about where to donate money.

If you do help us, please be assured that every single penny we collect will go directly to the people who need it and will benefit from it. We pay all our own costs; have no staff, no middle-men, just us and a fisherman who does everything for us out in Sri Lanka.

Wherever you are, we hope you have a happy and peaceful holiday.

Della & Don 

More progress at the School

Fran showing the Principal and staff the new laptops

Frances, a colleague of Gav's, has been out in Sri Lanka for just over a week now and has been helping out at the Village School.  Her primary job has been to set up three laptops which were donated by Cleeve School near Cheltenham in the newly created computer room, funded in part by the Dragon School in Oxford and their Dragon Sale in 2011.

Pupils getting to grips with technology

The school now has three laptops, internet connectivity (anyone fancy sponsoring the ongoing monthly commitment to pay for the dongles? - £10 a month would do it!), and web cams, and we are now paying for a part-time IT tutor. The pupils now have the best chance of studying for IT exams and of course, improve their English skills at the same time, which is a major step forward in terms of the kids' education and their future career opportunities.

We also hope the connectivity will improve regular communications from the school which has been understandable difficult being 6,00 miles away.

Fran has also spent a lot of holding conversational English classes with children as well as introducing them to IT and from what we hear, the kids adore her.

Learning is fun!

In her first email, the Principal said "This is my new e-mail address, I am so happy to have the opportunity to create an e-mail account, with the help of Frances. We are so happy about her visit, and the children are so happy with the new computers. Today the children have worked together with her happily."

So, as ever, thanks to all those who have helped make this remarkable achievement happen.

A Bunch of Thanks from the Village School

We recently received the following email from the Principal of the Village school in Ratmalana. 

Note from the principal: 

To Dear Don  & Della,

Hi How are you... Hope you are doing good. We are very pleased with the renovations and repairs done to our primary section. It was such a ill ventilated room, often getting wet for the rain. There was very little security. In short it was not a pleasant place to work in. When the School reopened for the New Term the Children were thrilled when they saw a clean class room with the nice furniture and clean walls. The Teachers too were very pleased.

Not only that, we were able to arrange a section for the Science room and the Library. Now everything is kept neatly in its place and the Teachers are maintaining the place well. We were able to separate a section for Dancing too. The computer room is ready and we are waiting for our computers. The Directors who came on inspection were very pleased with the maintenance and security of the School. They made a very good remark in the Log Entry. So Thank you so much, all this is because of your help. The attendance too is good and because of the extra Teachers we are able to keep the children occupied when there are absent Teachers. The Teachers paid by you are doing a good job of work and the Children too love them.  

Our Children took part in a Drama Competition at Zonal level and got the First place. They also took part in an Art competition organized by the Municipality and they won Prizes. There were places for recitation and speech. We were very encouraged by these achievements.

So Thank you so much, all this is because of your help.

Hope to see you all soon.. Tc... May God bless you !

Principal

St. Marys Village School

Cycling Success

While Della, Don and the other trustees met in Oxford last Sunday for a regular Trustee Meeting (good fun and usually involves lots of cake!) Lucy, who has been out twice to Sri Lanka with us and her friends Freya and Ellie completed the final leg of their 100 mile cycle ride in aid of FODAD.

Although the ride was long and there were certainly a few aches at the end of day one, they had already reached their target of raising £1,000 which made the second leg much less arduous. 

So many thanks to Lucy, Freya and Ellie and everyone who backed them with their kind donations. It will help us to make a real difference with every penny raised going to support our projects.

Job done!

Brand New Classrooms

We’re very pleased to announce that thanks to everyone’s donations, we have completed major renovation works at the Village School.  The primary area has been transformed into a bright, dry and very pleasant place for the youngest children to be.  As well as replacing the roof and all timber work (it turned out that the roof was in imminent danger of collapse), there are new windows and grilles, built-in cupboards for storage and some second-hand donated desks and chairs.

In addition, one of the disused classrooms has been converted to a room to serve as a science lab (perhaps not maybe one we’d recognise) and the old music room is now set up for the students to learn computer studies.  All of this work has been completed in part by donations in memory of John Watson from Macmillan publishers who passed away in 2006 and a grant from the Dragon School in Oxford and their annual Dragon Sale for which we’re very grateful.

Looking like school now

We have been promised three laptops by Cleeve School near Cheltenham too, and hope that these will go out in October when Frances, a colleague of Gav, will spend two weeks at the school and help get the computer room up and running.

Fresh and bright new classrooms

The Computer Room

This is a significant achievement and means that the youngest kids from the most under-privileged backgrounds will have the best start to their education and all pupils will benefit from the new facilities and improve their chances of success in their studies.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and to Sarath our contractor in Ratmalana for ensuring the work was done on-time and to budget.

And this is a reminder of how it looked before...

Old friends and new bats

On Friday we  set off to see Sanjaya and Sanjeewa (the two boys from Ratmalana who had been taken into care and whom we spent three days trying to find in February). We were delighted to see them happy and well and we gave a cricket bat and balls to the brothers for all of the children at the orphanage to use. We also brought sweets and it was a pleasure to see the joy on the children’s faces.  They played cricket with the new bat. We made a donation towards the continued running of the orphanage and we have promised to visit them next time we return to Sri Lanka.

Presenting the cricket bat

Father Mahendra, whom we met almost directly after the tsunami, has been a driving force behind many of our main projects in Ratmalana, including the clinic and the educational sponsorships. He has since moved parish to Nayakakanda and is now setting up similar projects to those in Ratmalana. Since February 2011 we have been visiting him and contributing towards various projects, including feeding street children on a daily basis and the sponsoring of educational projects. We were invited to meet the newly formed Neighbours In Christ committee who help run these projects in Nayakakanda  and it was great to witness their enthusiasm and commitment.We look forward to meeting them again during our next trip. We gave 2 cricket bats to Father Mahendra to pass onto the street kids whom we were unable to meet on this trip due to the fact that their teacher had been taken ill. However we were delighted that we were able to meet several of the children we sponsor.

The NIC committee in Nayakakanda

Surrounded by machine guns

During the months of April to October the fishermen from our village move their boats to the fishing port in Colombo due to the monsoon sea. As we had not had the opportunity to see the boat which is now over 7 years old, we wanted to check if it was in a good state of repair. We set off early in the morning and got the train to Colombo.

We returned to the hotel and as we were approaching via Hotel Road, the police whom we had seen earlier had been joined by what we now know to be approximately 500 members of the presidential guard, who were posted everywhere including the rooftop of the hotel. As we drove in, it became apparent that the GM was waiting to meet the president of Sri Lanka for a special event. We pulled up in our three-wheeler, dirty and carrying our bags of fish and then we realised that the soldiers were armed with machine guns, which were trained on our tuk-tuk.  Later in the afterrnoon we walked to the beach and realised that there were camouflaged soldiers everywhere, as well as gun-boats and helicopters. Once the president left, everything returned to normal.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to blog about yesterday, when we had the pleasure of seeing Prasad (who is one of the village boys we have been sponsoring for some time) proudly play in a rugby match for his school team. Don (being the rugby expert) was very impressed by his performance as a ‘winger’ and said that he was one of the best players on the field.

Prasad (centre)

Clinic and the School

The clinic and the children supported by St. Joseph’s Church have been dear to our hearts since 2005 when we started working with them. We visited them this morning and were over the moon to hear that one of the children we had supported since that time is now teaching at an excellent school  in Colombo. The other children are doing well in spite of their tragic circumstances.  One family lives in the mud against the wall.  The clinic was, as usual full with waiting patients and the doctor was too busy for a chat but we were able to see the patients coming in for consultations, which reminded us just how worthwhile this particular project is.
The clinic recently held a free of charge medical camp, which was very successful.

 ‘The Medical camp was a great success and each year the numbers seem  to be increasing. We obtained the assistance of HelpAge for the testing of eyes and they detected over 25 cases of cataract which needed surgery. They have been  referred to their clinic where the surgery is done free of charge. They will also provide reading glasses to those in need. In addition we had Fasting Blood Sugar, Hearing testing, General health and Bone Health checks and nutritional counselling. It took a lot of planning and coordinating for this programme but at the end it was well worth it since so many benefited from this camp.’ [ An extract from an email from the administrator of the clinic]

After this we visited the school to have a chat with the Principal regarding communication and other general matters. It was successful (we think) and the Principal was delighted by the poster from the Village school in Hampstead, London, which we put up in her office.

We also met with the building contractor to discuss the renovation of the primary school area and a computer room. This was a productive meeeting and it was agreed that work will start at the beginning of August, when the school term ends.