A Productive First Week – 28.06.2013 by Sarah Noble

Well our first week here has certainly been entertaining! It all began with Laura falling over and hurting her ankle- not such a productive start although we have since made lots of progress and are close to finalising our programme for the summer. We have had a productive week working with the children in the different pre- schools and having meetings with the villagers. So far we have found that Vikimgama would like us to support them in creating individual vegetable plots for the homes of villagers and to help them to set up a crafts class whereby they learn to make cards and other things to sell for a profit. Kirelawela told us that they would like to have English classes. There future aim together with the help of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Organisation is to raise the funds needed to buy a plot of land in the village to build a Supermarket which will provide jobs for the members of the community. They also plan to create a community vegetable plot for the villagers to grow crops for themselves and to sell to others. We are all excited and looking forward to our second week filled with further discussions as to how these ideas will be made a reality.