Latest update from Sri Lanka

Hi, this is Katherine.  After volunteering for Asha last summer and supporting with their disability project, I am now back in Sri Lanka indefinitely and at present helping in the co-ordination of some of the work Asha do out here for 3 days a week.  It has been an exciting few weeks finding out about the work that Asha does and planning future developments!

The first cohort of hospitality trainees are coming to the end of their 3 month training and sat the written test last week.  I am pleased to announce that they all passed and are all very excited about the awards ceremony that is taking place in the Asha centre in Athidiya on Thursday of this week.  It will be a great opportunity to celebrate the trainees’ achievements and encourage further young people to take part in future training.  Each trainee has been asked to invite 2 friends who they think might be interested in the training in the future.

All the trainees who have completed the course have been offered work.  In fact some of them have multiple job offers!  We had a feedback session last week where the students met with myself, Sister Concepta and Anoja (one of the team from the hotel school).  We had some very positive feedback from the students as well as some ideas of how the training could be improved in the future.  For example, the use of spoken English has been a problem for many of the students and as a result the training providers are going to include English classes as part  of the training programme next time.  

On Saturday, I went to see the disability session that takes place twice a month in the centre.  As usual, the teachers started off with a mixed singing and dancing session with the children/young adults.  Then, the teachers did a painting activity with the children/young people with disabilities.  There were 2 new faces at the session, Poojani, who is 4 and has Down’s Syndrome and Priyanka, who is 29 and has a learning disability due to a fall on her head when she was a toddler.  I was able to meet with Poojani, Priyanka and their families in order to look at what support Asha can offer.  Both Poojani and Priyanka have huge potential and hopefully specialist support at the centre will help their development.  

Attendance at the disability session is sometimes low and my plan is to meet with some of the children and their families and see how we can encourage them to come along every time to the session.  In the future, we want to expand the sessions to weekdays so that those who have no access to school at present are still able to learn and develop.

So I am looking forward to another eventful week with the Asha team, I’ll keep you posted on what happens!

Katherine