The Minority Tamils feel that they are in the dark in Sri Lanka. These kinds of projects would bring new hope in their lives.
Sri Lanka has been suffering from a civil war for last 27 years. This is mainly between a terrorist group from the minority Tamils & the Sri Lankan Government where the majority is Sinhalese. Although the government of Sri Lanka was able to militarily won this war,the root causes which started this are not fully addressed yet.
RYS projects have been able to successfully promote interreligious & intercultural harmony, better understanding among each religions & cultures & also facilitate better communication among the people of different religions. The service project would directly benefit the children of the orphanage but the education part & the participants working together at the service project would help to change the attitudes of the participants positively towards the intercultural & interreligious harmony and in a more wider aspect world peace.
The proposed calendar days are 21st to 28th August 2009, RYS educational programme, Leadership Development programme & 3 days field work would be covered during this project.
The proposed project is to renovate the "Blackwood( Kalupahana ) Village" situated in the Badulla District. This is a remote estate village in the midst of Tea Plantation of around 700 Acres. Badulla is situated in the hill country of Sri Lanka. It is about 275Km from the capital city Colombo. It is a world famous city due to its natural beauty with Water Falls, Lakes, Tea Plantations & Mountains.
There are 200 families living in this village but there only about 154 houses for these 200 families. In most of the houses there are more than one family living in. The ethnic constituent is 70% Estate (Indian) Tamils & 30% Sinhalese. Out of these families about 90% is working as Estate workers & about 10% are growing vegetables. The average daily income of these families are around 3-5 US$. During the project RYS is going to make the following renovations of the village.
1. Since the village does not have pipe borne water supply RYS is planning to establish a pipe borne water supply from the water springs up in the hills to the village. While renovating an old tank & a bund.
2. Improve the village playground and provide them with sports equipment.
3. Renovate the village Hindu Kovil , which is in a very dilapidated condition.
RYS projects are mainly done to develop the inner self of the individuals. Also there would be various education on topics like leadership development, time management etc. Therefore the participants would be able to develop themselves in to a more complete. Therefore the benefit of the project has to be considered in a very wider context. In that way following would be benefited by the project. Also from this project we are mainly serving the minority Tamils. This would surely remove the negative discriminative feelings they have towards the majority Sinhalese. This kind of misunderstanding has been a major cause for this civil war in Sri Lanka.
