December 2015-2017

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."

- Mother Teresa

Dear All,

Thank you for your support in our inaugural year. Although a large part of the effort was in creating all the elements of the charity we have been able to help many of the 1,100 underprivileged children we are supporting across Sri lanka.

We started with our launch event in April. We were blessed with the presence of upcoming singer Inno Genga who gave a wonderful show and we raised the inaugural £700 for SLCF.

May was our first trip to Sri Lanka where we visited all eight institutions who together look after 1,100 children. Although education is provided and teachers paid the government only gives 25 pence for additional resources for consumables and other activities. This makes the cost of education prohibitive for many families when the median household income is about £110 outside Colombo and the poorest 10% only earn £33 a month.

But we saw the enthusiasm of the people helping these children and how a little money can provide a big help in closing the opportunity gap between poor and middle class children.

A new school might cost £20m in the UK but we could build a completely new school in Mannar, one of the poorest areas of Sri Lanka for only £90,000. We have already made a contribution to be able to start the project but much more money is needed to bring this project to completion. At the moment the school makes the most of a large house but three classes have to share the same space.

In Jaffna we arrived just in time as the major building of a hostel for girls enabling them to access education had recently burned down and now girls were having to sleep 10 to a room which was already crowded for 4. We were able through your generosity to make a sizeable contribution to the rebuilding.

We also have made a contribution to provide 35 foster girls with a second bathroom!

A major platform for development in our mind is to provide better access and connection for these people with the internet and all it offers. So we have provided resources, computers and a paid for internet connection and will be continuing in investing in online education. Luckily with BQu one of our corporate sponsor being in Sri Lanka we can offer these institutions with ongoing technical support to ensure any investment remains of value.

We hope to build on this substantially in 2016 as we have now money we have raised, a team to support online education and a network of institutions through which to access people that can benefit directly from donations.

One initiative we will be testing in 2016 is the creation of high productivity personal vegetable gardens to help provide good nutrition to poor people and cut their food costs.

The other is to open an internet access point in a parish North of Colombo to see if the provision of this facility to the local population would enable them to improve their life chances.

We had three more fund raising events in 2015.

We participated in the BBQ Summer Event of Catholic Church of Our Lady and Saint Thomas of Canterbury located in Harrow on the Hill. We were amazed by the warm reception by the parishioners and we ran out of both prosecco and hot dogs during the day! We hope to build on this small step in working with the catholic church in the UK.

We were fortunate in addition to receiving a generous donation of £500 by GSK to also be able to have a small stand during lunch at Stockley Park GSK where we raised another £320.

Finally in early December we also had a fund raising at LS Group which has been a constant supporter of SLCF where we not only raised an additional £300 on the day but LS and its staff is now providing us with a regular contribution more than doubling our ability to help children in Sri Lanka.

We have given nearly £4,000 to help with the improvement of the buildings and fabric the in many cases was in need of total repair.

We also have given about £2,000 in resources to provide laptop computers, internet access and networking in all the 7 institutions.

Finally we have given £800 to support prizes for events, school supplies and food to help student revise for their GCSEs.

Further events pictures can be seen in the Past events portal.

2018 News letter will be released soon with New projects update and pictures.

Thank you for your support throughout this fantastic journey and for helping us make a difference.

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