June 2011 Update

Yala Fund Update June 2011

The months are passing very quickly in our distant corner of Sri Lanka. We have been busy fixing up a run-down Old Age Home just outside Tissamaharama. The Subhadra Elders' Home, just off the Kataragama Road, has 25 elderly men and women who have been abandoned by their families. The Home's founder, a lady Monk, died three years ago and the place had fallen into disrepair. Sri Lankans give gifts of food to poor people as alms-giving, but the living conditions were appalling with dirty mattresses and no chairs.

We have supplied the Home with brand-new items: 25 beds, mattresses, sheets, pillows and mosquito nets along with medical equipment including wheelchairs, bedpans, commode chairs and crutches.

The buildings badly needed new coats of paint, so we have smartened things up and are constructing a women's bathroom and toilet.

We have started paying salaries for the Matron and assistant and have arranged a daily newspaper delivery. The elderly people living here are incredibly grateful for our help and say they are sleeping much better thanks to the new beds and mattresses.

So far we have spent £4,000 on the Elders' Home.

In our schools programme, we have paid for classroom repairs and painting at several schools. We are continuing to supply and repair playgrounds for primary schools since they are excellent value for money. Children play on them every day. We are helping build a playground and vegetable garden at Mahasenpura school and are paying for playground repairs at four other schools: Ikkapalama, Tissapura, Samanpura and Yatala. We put in new playground equipment at M.R. Thassim Muslim school near Weerawila.

We supplied more than 60 uniforms and shoes to Marangahawela school and gave 59 pairs of shoes to Weligatta primary school. The children in these schools are from very poor families. It is not uncommon in this rural area for the father, and sometimes mother, to abandon their children who are taken in by grandparents or put into orphanages. Many mothers take jobs as housemaids in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia since this is the only way that they can earn a reasonable salary.

We are providing sports equipment and kit to deserving schools where children are showing talent.

We are distributing 160 "School in a Bag" kits donated by the UK-based international charity Piers Simon Appeal. Each schoolbag contains pens, pencils, maths set, ruler, water bottle, books and other items. These are invaluable materials for poor rural children anywhere in the world, let alone Sri Lanka.

We are paying for repairs to computer labs at various schools and in some cases have paid electricity arrears for schools whose power was about to be disconnected. One large school, Tzu Chi (built after the Tsunami by a Taiwanese Buddhist organisation), was without electricity for 8 months due to non-payment of bills. We have paid for reconnection and the school is now strictly controlling electricity usage.

We have supplied the Tissamaharama Medical Officer of Health (MOH) with a multimedia projector & laptop for presentations to expecting mothers and school children. We also supplied a Doppler ultrasound foetal heart monitor for maternity clinics. There are outbreaks of Dengue Fever and Leptospirosis in all parts of Sri Lanka and we are helping health workers with education programmes.

We are supplying Hambantota hospital with 3 pulse oxymeters.

We have awarded medical grants to patients recovering from cancer and for cataract operations.

We are paying monthly study and medical grants to several children and have just started paying a monthly bursary to a first-year medical student, Trileeshiya, who is from a poor farming family in Tissamaharama. Students have to find money for boarding house fees, meals, course materials and bus fares.

We are continuing to pay monthly support grants to various institutions in the district around Tissamaharama. These include Sith Sevana Home for mentally handicapped children, Suwa Sevana Boys' Orphanage and Ape Petau ("Our Cubs") Daycare centre in Hambantota for children with learning disabilities.

In certain cases we are awarding interest-free loans to help poor people develop small businesses.

With sincere thanks, as always, to our many friends and sponsors in the UK who make this work possible.

Jon Ashworth, Beverley Thompson, John Thompson and Suzy Payne

1st June 2011