Saturday 26th November

On Saturday I went to Vajira Sri Childrens Development Centre which is a tax exempted social service charity institute in Kotte that is run by a monk. In 1983 the orphanage was established when ethnic violence started in Sri Lanka. The orphans are given shelter, food, education and vocational training to make them valuable citizens of Sri Lanka. The home started with just boys and later included girls and infants, presently the children are admitted through the probation and childcare services as well as the judiciary. Currently there are 205 boys and girls, 32 infants and only 11 teachers also it is the largest Children's orphanage in Sri Lanka. I visited the school in the morning to see what could be done and when, i spoke to the monk and he told me that they were short of necessary supplies for the students to learn, i decided to undertake this new challenge. So i got a time to come back by with all the things and then spend some time with a few of the kids. I went to various shops and i bought supplies for the 15 kids i was going to spend my time with, i bought for each child; 2 pencils, an eraser, a book to write in, and a box of colouring pencils. I wrapped them up in brown paper bags and gave them to the children, they were all really happy. I spent some time with the children and we worked collaboratively together to draw and colour some pictures with them, after this we took the kids outside to play a game of cricket with them. All the kids had a lot of fun playing with us but we had to say goodbye because they needed to wash and get ready for a ceremony. I took a look around the rest of the school to see what ideas i could get for the next time i go back because then i can plan out exactly what i need to get and need to do before i go. Next time i am thinking about taking some sport supplies like a few footballs because when i was speaking to the monk to see what games i could play with them they only had some volleyballs and some cricket bats. I think that our school should set up a permanent CAS group to raise money for this school as it needs a lot of work throughout the school for example their playground equipment is old and unusable. For this, we must plan and initiate activities so that when we go back to that school we will know exactly what to get and what to do therefore saving us precious time on the day. Other volunteers help out, at the childrens home we talked with a volunteer from England and she explained how she has been here for 2 months and is helping out the school by teaching the children English.