Introducing Child Action Lanka
For the past two weeks, we've been on a whistle-stop tour of Sri Lanka! From the idyllic beaches of the South coast to the Ancient Cities heading North, we've been lucky enough to experience the variety of incredible sights this small island has to offer. We even saw a leopard in the wild!
We are now in the small village of Chenkalady, close to the coastal town of Batticaloa in the East of Sri Lanka. Here we are collaborating with a second charity, Child Action Lanka, bringing our drama work into communities that were greatly affected by both the civil war and the 2004 tsunami. Even though peace has been restored and homes have been rebuilt, the communities are still having to deal with the consequences of such loss and trauma.The charity's mission statement:
Child Action Lanka works to assist and transform the lives of disadvantaged children in Sri Lanka. Many of the children live and work on the streets as beggars; as such, they are often socially excluded and deprived of opportunities and respect. Hunger, neglect, exploitation and abuse are just a few of the many challenges faced by these children every day.At Child Action Lanka, we defy the common local belief that “street children are born bad”. Our purpose is to enable disadvantaged children to realize the possibilities for themselves and change their own lives for the better.
Our first sessions introduced us to some of the children that CAL work with on a daily basis. Aged between 5 and 15, the children attend one of the five after-school centres each day where teachers work with them to improve their Maths, English and IT skills. The centres also offer each child a daily food ration, providing nutrition that is often lacking due to the poverty most families face.
Before we arrived, we were already aware that our aims for this project would be very different from our first with Tea Leaf Vision. The children who attend the CAL centres have little to no English and are much younger than the 18-24 year olds in Maskeliya. Our aims are therefore less ambitious in that, due to the above factors, as well as less time, we realise that we will not be able to explicitly tackle sensitive social issues through role play as we would normally endeavour to and succeeded in doing so with TLV.
Having said that, it makes this next project no less valuable or important and simply means we will tailor the work to the children's capabilities and focus mainly on confidence building, team work and having fun. Whilst these aims appear general, for a child born into a community torn apart by war and natural disaster, these fundamental elements couldn't be more important. Even though these children may be too young to fully understand the hardships of their lives and the complexities of the past, they are at a crucial age for developing self-esteem and confidence.
It is for this reason that our work will focus on providing them with the tools to develop in this way and to positively approach their futures.Instead of viewing it as a hindrance, we will use the lack of English as positive impetus for the project, using drama exercises to teach basic vocabulary and simple sentence structures. We are also lucky enough to work alongside two volunteer translators who will assist us by speaking in Tamil to the children whenever necessary.
With nearly 500 children across 5 different centres, we are really excited to travel into the different communities and work with all the children under Child Action Lanka's care here in Batti. We have just 2 weeks, but we hope we can use our drama sessions to create afternoons of fun and positivity and in some way make a difference!