another exciting adventure

We met Ms Silva, the principal of Sri Punyakami. As we entered the school compund, we saw a tired looking building, barely equipped classrooms and an environment with very little appeal for learning, creativity and innovation.
As we started talking to Ms Silva about her school and pupils, it was apparent to us that this principal not only faced the challenge of running an under resourced and poor performing school but battled with many social problems mainly poverty, preventing pupils to purchase basic school related items such as shoes, books and bags. Without the help of Asha Trust, a large majority of children will still come to school on an empty stomach and leave hungry at the end of the school day. Access to food is a basic human right and good nutritious food is far beyond the reach of many children who attend this school.
As well as social problems, Ms Silva also faced emotional problems with her teenagers. She had a teenage girl who eloped with an older man, an attempted suicide, many single parent families as well as children with no parents or children who were either looked after by the granparents, relatives, neighbours or a known person. When she related some of the stories to us, it felt like a storyline straight out of Eastenders but it's amplified a hundred times more. Many of these children are stuck in a cycle of poverty, poor education,no qualifications, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy with a future outlook of very low paid jobs (working as servants for many women) or jail sentence. It may sound like a complete exaggeration but with 95% of children facing the above problems, it is the reality they face.
This lead to a discussion around self esteem, especially for girls. Ms Silva told us that with a heavy curriculum to deliver, this subject was not even considered. Although our main purpose was to run nutrition based workshops, we also agreed to run some very basic self esteem workshops for the 14-16 year olds.
After organising time tables for our nutrition and self esteem programmes, we then headed back for a nice cup of Ceylon tea. Our heads reeling with all the information and prep work we needed to do before Monday dawned upon us.