Ongoing Projects
Food Gardens
Together with a range of local partners, we finance and develop organic school, home, and community gardens across Sri Lanka. In a country suffering from widespread malnutrition, we empower our community partners to produce healthy foods to feed themselves and their communities, following the indigenous Sri Lankan regenerative farming technique of agroecology.
2018 – present
Future Stars Preschool
In 2018, we partnered with local principal Lakshimi Dharmawansa to open Future Stars Montessori, a dual-language English-Sinhala preschool, which enrolled 25 children and trained its teachers in Montessori pedagogy. Though the school was forced to close during the pandemic, we just broke ground on a new location!
Past Projects
2020-2023
Emergency Food Aid
With our partners on the ground, we currently support 1000 people with direct food aid. We have provided aid to 22,000 families since the crisis began. Our goal is to serve 1,000,000!
Together with the Institute for Professional Studies and Skill Development, we have distributed food biweekly and, where necessary, delivered dry goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and stocked and operated two different food kitchens.
2014-2023
Library Seeding
Beginning in 2014 until the onset of COVID, we had personally donated books and soon thereafter established a relationship with various foundations to both seed new school libraries and supplement existing ones with English novels, materials and text books across southern Sri Lanka. These schools were generally impoverished areas and lacked access and resources to English books.
Beginning with a focus to establish one library to meet the needs of one English medium school, this project grew to support over 120 schools and orphanages. To date, we have provided over 8,000 English-language books, from pre-K to A-level reading levels. A direct result of this project has been the rise in English literacy in our partner schools, as well as the ability for students to continue on to A-level education and be accepted into university.
2022
Village School Repairs
For years, the government failed to send money for repairs to this local village school, leading to approximately 400 students having to study under umbrellas when it rains. With our financial support and the leadership of their principal, Prasad Wanasinghe, the children came together to repair the roof, floor and walls of the school themselves.
2021 Relief for Isolated Monks
In June of 2021, we supported 30 Buddhist monk university students sheltering in place at Sri Jayawardenapura University hostel with ayurvedic medicines, medical supplies, fresh foods and dry goods to meet thor day with daily meals when their food supplies ran out during their period of isolation and lock-in.
2020 – 2022
Phones for Remote Learning
With schools shut down in the wake of Covid-19, we provided dozens of cell phones for students to be able to continue studying, especially to A level students in remote villages. From the village of Hakmana, at least one student from a school in this initiative was able to pass exams and continue on to university to study Engineering.
Tamil Children’s Home
In partnership with the Sri Bodhiraja Foundation, we successfully helped raise the funds to pay for building an orphanage for Tamil children in rural Rakwana in the Ratnapura District.
2017
Flood Relief
In 2017, the Rakwana region was hit by terrible mudslides which displaced 270,000 people. In an effort overseen by Venerable Nivitagala Wijitha Thero, we provided funds to support the provision of emergency food relief and bottled water to thousands of families directly impacted by the disaster in Rakwana.
Rural Food Sovereignty Education
Together with Api Yaluwo, a community organization in Southern Sri Lanka, we have supported the development of food sovereignty initiatives at local schools. So far, we have taught over fifty young men and women to grow food organically and use local organic vegetables to cook healthy meals. These efforts are intended to fight the prevalence of diabetes and other noutrition-related diseases in the region. They then distribute meals freely in local villages.
