Last day

 Pupils at Koralawella school

Two of our hotel trainees

I had a packed day planned for the last day.  A visit to Koralawella School first thing – this is the school where Shyla has volunteered on her own for  the  last couple of years,  making the most of her long summers before the rest of us arrive.   Asha provides a breakfast club, initiated because the teachers told us a few pupils in this very poor community were fainting during the day.  They don’t faint any more.  Our friend Elizabeth is Headteacher at a primary school in East London, and is keen to establish a link with this school.  Last Summer Shyla worked with the  Koralawella pupils to write about themselves and their families for the UK pupils, and I had a lovely collection of responses from London to take back.  It’s all a bit slow and old school without internet access (no electricity at the school), but we’ll get there.

And then I went to meet the potential hair & beauty trainees, to take them to the training venue to meet the course leaders.  Unfortunately, none showed up!  The local team were very disappointed, and a bit embarrassed I think, but to be honest, it was quite a big ask to think they’d head off to Colombo , to an unknown venue to find out about rather scary course.  I should have read the signs when one of the young women I'd invited a few days earlier asked me what she needed to wear - of course I told her what she was wearing that day would be just right, but perhaps it was all rather intimidating The main reason given for the no-show was that they and their families were concerned about the  journey to Colombo – all of 4 or 5 miles.  But we face this in  East London all the time – young people boroughs like Newham and  Tower Hamlets are reluctant to seek work in central London.   

So I went off on my own to the Salon and explained to Cheryl, who runs the programme.  She responded really positively and said the magic words “Why don’t we start the course off in your new centre then?”   We know that local is best, but I had understood that it was a requirement it had to be delivered in the established centre in Colombo, with all the equipment etc.   She’s going to start off with activities that  don’t require sinks,  and we’d need to get some simple portable mirror-stands.   Once the trainees are hooked and relationships established, she’ll move them to the Colombo salon.  A very positive outcome.  That afternoon, back in Athidiya, a young woman sought me out because she had heard about the course and was very keen to pursue a career in hairdressing – she’d done a short course already, but it had not led to employment.  She is well known to our team, and she will help with recruiting the  first cohort. 

I also met the team leading the hotel management course.  We discussed a celebration event at our new centre in May, to mark the completion of the first cohort’s training.  They are going to invite parents and others from the local patch to celebrate the achievement of the group who completed the programme, all of whom will by then have secure employment in high quality hotels and restaurants.  We hope this will help us to recruit the second cohort.

I’m back in the  UK now, looking forward to returning in July with the whole family and 18 young people and their teachers from Eston Park School in Middlesbrough.

Yesterday I visited Sri Punyakami School, the one closest to Athidiya. We’ve been working with that school for six years now, and have brought teams of volunteers to work here for the past 4. 18 pupils from Eston Park are coming over in July. The school was jubilant when I got there because they had received their O level results this week, and had a great set of results – with two pupils achieving 9 passes, including Singhala, Maths and English. There’s a new banner up with the star pupils’ pictures and results displayed for all to see. Unfortunately, the numbers sitting the exam continue to be very low – only 9 this year. Most leave by the end of Year 11.

I also met Hiruni, a young woman who’s been attending Sister’s after school for several years and had the Asha funding for extra classes. She proudly told me she passed 9 O levels including 3 As and 3 Bs. Now she’s going to do A levels – the first in her family to do so.

Sam, Ellen and Louise, the teachers from the Murton Primary school in Durham have been at St Mary’s School in Dehiwala –a school where about a third of the pupils are from our patch in Athidiya. They’ve been amazed at the warmth and hospitality here. The pupils at St Mary’s have loved meeting them and the local teachers have enjoyed watching the different approach of the British teachers. Sam, Ellen and Louise’s enthusiasm is contagious – they’ve been a real pleasure to be with, and we are hoping to build a strong partnership between their school and Asha.

When at the Sri Punyakami school, I showed Ms Silva the Head the pictures of her ex-students at work in the hotels. She was so pleased to see them in their new role. I also told her about the possibility of the Hair & Beauty course, and she told me she was confident that a number of her ex-pupils would be interested. She spent that afternoon and the next morning going door-to-door around Athidiya, inviting interested young women to come to a meeting with me this morning. I met four young women at the school today – they were finding out for their friends too, who could not come this morning. They ranged from 17-20, none had done well in their O levels, and when I asked them what they were doing now, they said they were all “at home”. They had filled in application forms for a few jobs, but nothing came of it. The 20 year old had done a sewing course, but that too had not led to work. One of them had worked in a “hair dye place” in Athidiya for two months but had left because it was “a bad place”. The physical conditions in these small local places are often very poor, so I don’t doubt her. I told them about the course and made a big issue of the level of commitment required – its a four month programme and they have to travel to Colombo . Its only about 4 miles away, a 40 minutes bus journey, but as often in these communities, its a world away. We’ll meet their travel costs but I know that’s only part of the challenge, the biggest issue is leaving the safety of their close community. I gave them all the information, told them to discuss it with their families and if they are still interested, I’d to meet them and any of their interested friends on Monday, to take them across to the training centre to meet the course leader and see the place. Fingers crossed! I leave on Tuesday morning.

I’ve been visiting the young trainees on their placements in the hotels. They look so smart and every one told me they were very happy, and were determined to make a success of it. Kirthina, a young woman who we’ve known for years, is working at the Mount Royal. If you’ve been on one of our trips you’ll know that as the hotel near Tropic where we go for a swim, and Kirthina is the girl who always does the classical dance at Sister’s shows. She has been snapped up by the hotel, who have offered her a permanent job even before she completes her training. Her father is a vegetable seller and her mother works only occasionally, and she tells me they are very pleased at her securing a good job.

Sudharshan will also be familiar to anyone who’s been out here – he is the boy from Punyakami School who is a talented drummer. I remember seeing him use the school dustbin to lead singing sessions at breaktime. He is at the Concorde Hotel in Dehiwala, and his manager tells me he is learning fast, but needs to trim his hair! It’s all very strict. Sudharshan’s father used to work as a tailor, but became ill and is no longer able to work. His mother is a carer and the family only manage because his older sister has gone to the Middle East as a domestic worker, and remits money to support the family. I asked him about the drumming, and he told me he plays for his church every Sunday. He’s invited me to his church youth group on Saturday morning, where some 50 children from Athidiya attend, he tells me. I’ll try to go.

Sister and I have also been visiting the young trainees with poor attendance. One has stopped going because the manager asked him to get his hair cut and he doesn’t want to! Sister spoke to him very sternly and he agreed that this was a sacrifice he’d have to make. Sister warned him that if he did not get himself occupied, he’d be at risk of getting caught up in the drug dealing which draws in so many unemployed young men in this community. He did seem to understand. One of the young women told us that the training salary was too low, and that was why she had stopped going. It reminded me of conversations I had with Year 11s at Tom Hood who used to say that it’s not worth going to work for less than £300 a week. Sister and I had a long conversation with this young woman, and all the time there were four or five younger siblings in the room. “Did you bring any money home to help your mother today? Are you going to bring any tomorrow?” she was asked. After two months, the trainees will receive a proper salary, but two months is a long time in the life of a 17 year old. She promised to go back and Sister will keep an eye on both of these young people.

The team feel that the biggest issue for both these young people is that their parents are not able to offer them the kind of support they need to persevere when the going gets tough.

The teachers are having a great time at the school. They have taken a day off today and gone to visit Kandy.

I went to see the Centre in full flow today - the children were clearly loving the space. They played games and even danced. The special needs session was happening too, Three teachers from RCCI, the special needs school we support a few miles away, helped to run an inclusive session, where all the children sang and performed together, before leading activities with the six children with learning difficulties. When the two groups separated, the main group went upstairs to the first floor, which is still a building site – years of health and safety consciousness made me rather anxious at this point. Sister sat them down in what will be an office, on mats and benches constructed of planks and buckets... and they had their “life education” class. This only happens twice a month, when the special needs group needs the main space.

I’ve also had a meeting with the team from the hotel school, who are delivering our employment training programme. Our trainees have now completed their classroom phase, and are on their placements at hotels. Things are going well, most of the young people have settled into their placements and within two weeks, one young woman was offered a permanent job by her hotel. Anuja, Hiran and Harpo who are running the programme were confident that all who complete will be offered jobs. Unfortunately there are a few, mostly girls, whose attendance has been sporadic since the group separated and they were placed in separate hotels. We did know the level of commitment required on this programme would be challenging for these young people, who have little experience of regular work in their families. Many of their parents and neighbours have casual work – they earn by the day, which must engender a different mindset. I have the names of the poor attenders, and will be visiting these young people with Sister or Mrs V in the next day or two. Stern words will be spoken. Sister will express her disappointment – she is confident we can get them back on track.

We have realised that our training programme for employment in the hotel and restaurant business is not always appealing to young women. One of the suggestions for addressing this problem is to explore another industry, perhaps hair and beauty. We are a little hesitant to embrace a stereotype, I know that many schools and colleges in the UK have found that hair and beauty courses enthuse some of the most disengaged young women . Yesterday I was introduced to the woman who runs one of the most successful hair and beauty schools in the country. The wife of a relative, she trains about 75 young women a year, and every one has secured a good job with one of the large, reputable salons in Colombo. She tells me that there is a real shortage of well-trained staff for the industry, and that she is regularly asked by the salons for trained staff. She told me she has been looking for a way to “give back”, to do something meaningful with her business. Having achieved commercial success, she said she longs to make a real difference. She has been trying to take her course into prisons, as a way of giving young women an employment skill on release. She is keen to take on a cohort of our young women. We’ll discuss this with Sister and the team, and talk to the young women in Athidiya – its early days, but very exciting.

New Centre in use!

Radhika
I’m out here in Sri Lanka helping some teachers from Murton Primary in Durham to set up a link with one of the schools we work with out here. More about that in a moment.

I visited the new centre today. I could scarcely believe it – all those discussions, plans, fundraising and more fundraising has resulted in this wonderful place – bright, airy and so much bigger than the room they had. Sister is beaming. I haven’t met the children yet, but she tells me they absolutely love it. They dust, sweep, and have brought plants for the front. Flowers, chillies, a few vegetables. The children had done the move – carrying all the tables, chairs, books etc from the old space to this. The first floor is yet to be completed – we’re still fundraising – but we are hopeful that the whole building will be in use by the Summer.

The main reason for my trip is to support this school link between Murton Primary and St Mary's College Dehiwala. Murton secured some funding from the British Council to do a teacher exchange. The British teachers arrive on Sunday, but I got here a few days early to make sure all the arrangements made by email were in place. So, I pop over to the school this morning and the Head tells me the children are having exams all next week and the Head of English who has been my main link is on a course for the entire week! The week after next would be much better for a visit...

It’s happened to us before. It’s partly connected to the flexibility here , things (like the teacher’s course) get arranged at the last minute, confounding our well-laid plans. But that flexibility has meant that they can shift the times of some of the exams so that the British teachers can spend time in normal lessons, and the Head of English has agreed to miss a couple of days of his course. And I met several other teachers who are really looking forward to the visit and will look after my group. Its all going to be all right. But for a moment there, I did get worried.

The centre is officially open for business

Yesterday at 9.30 (an auspicious time) we went to the new centre to have an opening ceremony. The three teachers; Sister, Mrs V and Rosemary were there, as well as some of the children who didn’t have school, a few of the trustees for Asha Foundation, the architect and the builders. We did the boiling of the milk, a tradition when you move into a new house, we had to wait a while before the milk actually boiled over. Then we had a few hymns and prayers before lighting a traditional lamp. Everybody ate kiribath (milk rice), a meal eaten on special occasions, and one of the local women brought some lovely home-made ginger tea and sweets. It was a very nice ceremony and hopefully the children will be able to move in there soon.

We went back to Athidiya today for a special needs programme that happens in the centre. Some of the teachers from RCCI, a special needs school we work with, go to Athidiya every other Saturday to work with some of the special needs kids there. Sister also has what she calls a life education class on a Saturday with the kids that go to her lessons during the week, and when we arrived both groups had merged together and everyone was singing and dancing. After watching a couple of the inevitable performances we left the RCCI teachers with the special needs kids in the old centre and took the rest of the kids to the new centre. There, they played lots of running around games that could never have been attempted in the old building which was lovely to watch.

Hi, this is Shyla.
Yesterday we went to Athidiya with Harpo’s team to conduct the interviews for the Job Training Project. 12 young people turned up, so not as many as we were hoping for but it was a good start at only 2 days notice. Before doing the interviews the team talked to the young people about what the course will contain and explained what a great opportunity this is. They then did the interviews fairly casually, just taking each one to the side. The team were very encouraging to all the young people, taking every opportunity to give positive feedback. They have taken on 7 of the 12 interviewed because the others were too young, which means we still have 8 more to find. Three of them are girls, so we definitely need some more, but of course Sister has the successful applicants recruiting others.

This morning I went to the Koralawella school to find out some things to pass on to Mayespark School in Redbridge which is linking with it. As I arrived the whole school was outside and lined up, singing the school anthem accompanied by their band. I did a few things with the kids and then rushed back to meet Anita with Sister and Dad. Anita is a psychologist working with Samuthana a charity that deals with trauma. Anita and her colleague Laura, are interested in the drugs problem in Athidiya and want to talk with Sister to see if there is anything they could help with.
While Dad went off to have a meeting in RCCI, a special needs school we work with, Sister and I went to meet 2 of the girls who will be on the Job Training Project. I took the video camera and asked questions about their lives and why they want to do the Job Training. Both girls Fathers are drug users, one of them has a Father in prison, the other ones Mother is in prison. As I walked around Athidiya with Sister we met a few people who had recently left prison for taking or selling drugs, as well as several drug addicts who Sister would tell to go to the doctor or search their pockets. It just shows what a massive problem it is in the area. In fact a few days ago we saw 2 men who had been caught selling drugs being marched down the street by soldiers as members of the community watched, vaguely interested, and then told us it happens all the time.

Tomorrow we are having the opening ceremony for the building, the ground floor is almost done and just needs a few finishing touches before we can start using it.