Rice and curry and a lot of help
View(s):The Sri Lanka Association of Women in Belgium marks 25 years of assisting their homeland
By Kaveesha Fernando
The Vision 2020 programme: Helping prevent loss of sight
The Sri Lanka Association of Women in Belgium has completed over 100 projects in its 25 years, says its President Sharmini Jacobs with a sense of accomplishment. “I’ll admit, there were times when the projects we undertook were daunting, but we saw them through,” she told the Sunday Times on a recent visit to Colombo.
Started in 1990, the Sri Lanka Association of Women in Belgium has members from all religions and ethnicities and raises funds for projects in Sri Lanka through their charity dinners. They also help Sri Lankan women in Belgium, Sharmini explains, citing the recent case of a woman who faced financial and legal difficulties, having migrated to get married. “Helping women in times of crisis is part of our constitution and so we helped her get back on her feet,”’ says Sharmini.
The projects have come in many forms. Around 20 years ago they undertook the construction of 20 houses in Pariswatte, Kandana based on a self-help model, where the houses were constructed in stages. ‘‘If the foundation was being built, all of them had to build the foundation before we would give them the material to build the rest. In this way, they had to help each other,” says Sharmini. “It’s nice to see them thriving,” she adds.
A project where the association facilitated children helping other children in need was the Lama Gramaya project. A grandchild of one of the members of the association had asked his class in Belgium to collect money to help Lama Gramaya, an orphanage run by nuns in Sri Lanka. The children made pancakes and sold them to their parents to collect money. “The pancakes were rather thick and unappetizing but their parents bought them anyway in order to help the cause,” laughs Sharmini.
When the tsunami left its trail of destruction too they rallied, constructing nine houses in Weligama. Here raising funds was made easy because of the outpouring of concern and generosity for Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami. “I would be at the supermarket buying groceries and people would ask me where I was from and when I replied that I was from Sri Lanka they would ask if there was any way they could help,” she says.
When a Belgian news channel showed Belgian soldiers helping rebuild the Sambodhi home in Galle after the tsunami, the association recognized it immediately. “We had helped them over the years so we knew the home,” says Sharmini. Having contacted the news channel, they visited the home, donated cooking equipment and met the cost of food for the home for three years.
April 2005: Sharmini (left) with recipients of a house in Weligama
The association has been working closely with GrosSchilde and the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association for the past 10 years. Located in Schilde, Belgium, GrosSchilde supports projects initiated by members of the community and have been giving the association partial funding, while the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association has been using their vast network of guides to help with the implementation of projects.
The Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association and the Sri Lanka Association of Women in Belgium also joined forces with the Ministry of Health in 2009 for the Girl Guides’ Nethraloka project. This project was implemented at the Vavuniya Hospital, where the two organizations donated money for the lenses and other equipment needed to conduct 1000 cataract operations for people affected by the war.
Another project where this dynamic team collaborate with the Ministry of Health is the Vision 2020 project.A partnership between the World Health Organization, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, the Ministry of Health and other non-governmental and professional organizations, Vision 2020 aims to eradicate preventable blindness in Sri Lanka by year 2020. Through the project, the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association and the Sri Lanka Women’s Association in Belgium have been screening schoolchildren in Kegalle, Batticaloa and Nuwara Eliya.
A project undertaken jointly is the refurbishment of two schools in the north -Ampan AMTM School in Jaffna and Palmunai Aligar Vidyalaya in Batticaloa, both mixed schools. Together, the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association and the Sri Lanka Women’s Association in Belgium undertook the refurbishment of the existing buildings and donated furniture and reference books for the students in 2010.
The charity Sri Lankan themed dinners are how they raise most of their funds. Members cook large quantities of rice and curry to feed the guests and there is fun and games aplenty. “90% of the people who attend our dinners are Belgian, so we have a saree draping competition where I confuse them a little by showing them how to drape the saree in the Indian style and then the Kandyan style and ask them to drape it any way they like,” laughs Shramini, adding that sometimes the sarees end up being draped like bandages! The dinners need to be interesting and engaging to attract people, she says. But the purpose is always uppermost. “We show them a map of Sri Lanka at the dinner and pin all the areas where we have carried out projects. The map shows that our projects have covered many areas in the island, and for me that’s a great thing,” says Sharmini, satisfied that the work they have done over the years has reached so many back home.