Projects to help improve childrens’ lives, particularly their education, have been a fundamental goal of Friends of the South since our inception. Prior to the tsunami we helped equip two schools and set up a small scholarship programme for children in Galle.
Since the tsunami we have been very active with a variety of projects, including:
1000 kids to school. This project supplied 1000 children with complete sets of exercise books (ten per child), pens, pencils, colours, assorted other stationery and satchels. The project was executed by Help-O, a sri lankan ngo based in Dangedara, Galle, who are very experienced in community-based projects and human rights work, and with whom FoS has worked before. Children were carefully selected by them in conjunction with local schools and other cbo’s.
The construction of a large new school building at Buonavista College, Galle. This school has taken on several dozen children whose previous school was destroyed by the tsunami. We are building it in cooperation with a local businessman who attended the school and who is financing an equipped computer room within the school building.
Providing clothes. FoS has provided funds for school uniforms and other clothes for children on a number of occasions, including to children at Buonavista Primary, Galle and children in Hambantota district in a large project managed by the Southern Tsunami Trust (see Sponsor-a-Child).
Scholarships/school fees. Aside from the Sponsor-a-Child project, FoS has funded other scholarship projects, including one managed by the STT in Hambantota and one by the Katugoda Jamatah association in the devastated village of Katugoda near Galle.
Funds allocated
Friends of the South have so far allocated Rs2,000,000 (approx US$20,000) to these school and child projects.
