Thanks to the dedication of Ann Shanthi for repairing the toilets at the Day Care Centre at
Rasenthirakulam, Vavuniya, the children now have a clean toilet.
This day care centre is
situate in a remote village called Rasenthirakulam about 15 km from the
Vavuniya town. There are 28 to 30 children attending this day care centre
on an average every year. They come from very poor families, from the
ages of 3 to 6, a mix of boys and girls. The mothers leave them here at 7 am, and collect them around 1 pm, while they do some farm work close by. There are
two teachers in charge of these kids, and they are taught, English,
tamil, arts and crafts, and a bit of dancing too. These children are a
mix of Muslims, Christians and Hindus. They are given a mid day
snack comprising of cow pea, mung beans, manioc etc. Funding is provided
on a monthly basis by a few of us, and the rest is supported by the church.
With a few friends, Rtn Upali and Ann Shanthi De Silva has been
visiting this place regularly over the past several years.
Due to lack of funding,
basics such as decent toilet facilities are not available. What exists are a
few broken down, dirty toilets which do not even have doors. Since Water
and Sanitation are one of the priorities for the Rotary Club of Colombo, Shanthi wanted to carry
out this project as her contribution to the Club this year and she did a fund
raiser on her own to collect some funds to
do up the toilets. She had an afternoon of activities in our apartment
party room and was able to collect
225,000/-. With these funds she went ahead with the toilet work. The
toilets were colour washed and tiled, squatting
pans were replaced with new ones and 2 new doors fixed. The building where the
children study and play was also in a very bad shape. So with the
balance money it is now being colour washed. Below pictures from Rtn Upali and Shanthi's inspection visit in 17th August.
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| Toilet before repair |
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| Toilet after repair |
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| Outside area after repair |
The next project at this
centre will be to get a tube well done, as the present well goes dry during
certain months, and to provide pipe borne water which is currently not
available.
