Report activities 2013/2014
What does Sri Lanka Children’s Foundation Do?
Because of the adoption of their two daughters from Sri Lanka, Cees Sprangers & Riet Sprangers came in contact with the country and the local people of Sri Lanka. They have seen poverty due to economic backwardness.
Especially children and very poor families are often the victims of this problem.
Since the year 2000 we started the Foundation to help those people.
Vishaka Childrens Home in Kalutara-South is our biggest project.
In this children’s home are living 54 girls with the age between 4 and 18 years old.
Because of their traumatic history, they couldn’t stay at home.
The government placed them in this children’s home.
We started in 2004 helping Vishaka with a mainly reconstruction of existing buildings and
Since then we are taking care of maintenance activities.
From the start of this project we asked Mr.Lal to help us with the reconstruction of the building.
The buildings where very old ( over 80 years) and no longer suitable for use to give young children a good place to live.
We started with reconstruction of some old toilets and the bathroom, who are connected with the sleeping ward.
After the Tsunami December 2004, we managed to get much more money from several donations and decided to help the victims on the beach with temporary houses and school programs.
Mr.Lal also helped us to build a complete new school for boys and girls to learn a profession.
We also decided to give more help to Vishaka Children Home.
In 2005 we rebuild and expanded the dining room.
One year later we did some repairs and reconstruction of the sleeping ward and also build a new section to the main building a nursing room with separate bathroom.
Later on step by step we totally rebuild the main building and also did reconstruction of a small training centre next to the main building.
This building is used to give sewing classes and part of it used as a training / meeting room.
Also the older girls from Vishaka Home can attend classes at this school.
After their stay in Vishaka, it will be easier to find work in a textile factory.
In 2012 the roof of the sleeping ward collapsed. We had taken this period we lost capacity in the children’s home and ended up with 28 girls, that could sleep in the main building.
Due to the sleeping ward we recently capacity with 30 beds.
Last February 2014 we could welcome the 54th child and now we face a lack of capacity in kitchen area and stores.
We reconstructed that recently in February/ March this year.
What are our plans for the future?
It is not always good weather in Sri Lanka, so when it rains the children can’t play outside.
In which case they can only play in the sleeping ward and we don’t want that.
End of this year we want to start expending the playground area that has been covered by a simple roof.
So all the children can sit and play, doing their homework and using it as a meeting place.
Because of the 54 children, there is no room to study and on this moment the dining room and bedrooms are used for that.
There is an old big building that cannot be used.
We like to plan to do reconstruction on that step by step. First the roof has to be made new.
Later we can make separate rooms for training and art classes.
The building is about 200 m2, what means that’s big project for us.
We already started some concrete columns work with money from Buddhist Society, but that has to be stopped after the money is gone. They donated Rps.500.000 ( € 3000 ).
We try to get extra money from our sponsors by visiting summer fairs, but that will not be enough to start the whole project.
Total cost of this reconstruction are estimated about € 30.000.
Thanks to our Sri Lankan workers 2004
Over the last few years we realized these projects with the help of Mr.Thilak and Mr. Lal and his staff members.
Without there help we could not build the Vocational Training Center (Technische School) and Vishaka Childrenshome. We like to say thanks to our staff members, special Mr. Lal, and hope to work with them also by future projects.
To all foreign supporters/ sponsors
Thank you very much for supporting our foundation and we would like to wish you a very good and healthy 2009!
Due to the fact that we get more and more respons from people outside of Holland (The Netherlands) we feel we should also make reports of the activities of Stichting Kinderhulp Sri Lanka in English.
Thank you very much!