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Welcome
to our website.
We are into our fund raising events
now and are busy preparing for the Leamington Peace Festival in The Pump
Room Gardens, Leamington Spa on the 14th and 15th June 2008.
Please come along and support us and have an enjoyable time also.
Great bands and stands.
It is a very sad time at the moment in
Sri Lanka and it seems to be one step forward and two steps backwards.
Sri Lanka has been experiencing the worst rain fall in years causing
mass flooding which has resulted in deaths and loss of buildings.
As if this country isn't suffering enough!
I am afraid I have to mention the
unrest at the moment which is becoming more of a problem. No
activity has been reported in the West coast but the Foreign Office is
advising caution and no travel to the North and East coasts including
the Yala National Park. The country so needs tourism but we urge
anyone to please be very careful and avoid public transport. If
you decide not to go there this year how about donating something to us?
We will ensure it reaches someone who needs it. For further information
about travelling to Sri Lanka please have a look on the Foreign Office
Website:
www.fco.gov.uk
Thank you's are so important but it is impossible
to thank everyone who supports us but we do try. A big thank you
goes to Meryl at The Big Shed in Harbury Lane, Leamington Spa for
donating two printers for us to use in our fund raising office.
One of them prints A3 which is fantastic as we do not have one of these.
Thanks Meryl. See our link page. If you are local and need an item
of furniture - in fact anything, Meryl will have it I'm sure!
Latest news/projects
We have just provided a Primary School with
wonderful outdoor play equipment and the perimeter wall has been
beautifully decorated with bright and colourful paintings. The
children and parents are over the moon and very grateful to everyone.
Urubokka is a very poor and remote area in South Matara and the children
had no play equipment so we are very happy to bring you this news.
Grateful thanks to
Wecare Sri Lanka for their assistance. (See Our
projects for photos)
Also:
We have provided a livestock ramp to a
slaughter house in Kandy to help the animals on their final journey be
unloaded kindly from the transportation lorries. Before this they
were cruelly herded out and forced to jump out, often breaking legs!
Grateful thanks to Home and Abroad Animal Welfare for their assistance.
They have been doing a wonderful job providing shelter from the blaring
sun for these animals and we are humbled to be associated with them.
Please visit their website for pictures.
www.haaaw.org
Also:
Family sponsorship - we are delighted to
provide financial support to another needy family living in Polhena.
A donation of £300 has made such a difference to this family of 5
(mother, father, two girls aged 13 and 12 and a boy aged 4. The
father earns 200 rupees a day (about £1!) The mother is too ill to
work. This aid now ensures the children get an education and a healthy
diet. Would you like to make a difference to a family? Just
£300 is all we are looking for. 100% of your donation will go to a
family in need of help. Please contact us if you are interested.
(See Our projects for photos)
Also:
SOFA (Save Our Friends Association) helping
homeless and sick dogs received £200 from us to help feed and provide
medicines for their needy dogs this Spring. Again they were very
grateful and thank everyone for their support. We have to remember
that money in Sri Lanka goes much further than over here - for example
60p pays for a rabies injection! My dog had a rabies injection
last year and it cost £90 with all the paperwork!
Accounts
2005/6
We
recently submitted our accounts up to the end of 2006 to the
Charities Commission. With our partnered charity Sri Lanka
Direct.org the total amount raised by both charities was
£47,000.00! Sri Lanka Direct raised more than half of this amount
so very well done Graham and his team. Not bad don't you think for
two small charities ran by volunteers?
Nicki
Farthing - Founder and Trustee. 6th December 2007.
We
are very proud to inform you that this charity is ran by volunteers who
give their time for free. 98% of donations received go to our
causes the other 2% is spent sparingly on necessary expenses such as
stand fees where applicable or tombola prizes and merchandise. Any
other costs are paid for personally by either Jonathan Frost or myself
Nicki Farthing. We have great pleasure in helping where ever we
can and with continued help from you we CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Summer
Update - 23rd August 2007
by
Nicki Farthing (Founder)
I
am happy and relieved to report that the aid has now been completely
delivered to needy children and people in the worst tsunami hit areas in
Sri Lanka including areas on the East coast to people affected by the
civil unrest. Thank you to everyone who helped with this
operation. We WILL NOT be sending over any more aid in containers
due to the difficulties and expenses incurred. We will concentrate
on raising money to help the poor families, orphans and sick children as
before.
I
am also very happy to report that we have now raised the money needed to
pay the additional container costs (see below). It has been disastrous
year financially due to the terrible weather and recent outbreak of foot
and mouth which meant events we had planned to attend were
cancelled! Our last fund raising event was in June at the
Leamington Peace Festival where thankfully the weather was relatively
kind to us with only 2 down pours over 48 hours! This was a very
successful event for us and as usual we are very grateful to the organizers
of this event for supporting and believing in us.
POSTAGE
STAMP APPEAL
WE
WANT YOUR STAMPS!
We
are now collecting postage stamps either used or mint from any country
including UK to help raise money. We can raise up to £3.00 per
kilo of stamps which are bought from us by a stamp dealer. Please
ask your family and friends to start collecting the stamps. Any
stamps are suitable including UK, world, old, new, used, unused,
postcards, First day Covers, Presentation packs, Sheets of stamps,
interesting envelopes, collections, on paper, off paper, Philatelic
Ephemera including anything related to the Postal Service/Post Office
etc. Tear off the stamp on the envelope leaving about 1/2" (12mm)
of envelope all around the stamp. Stamps which are damaged
are worthless but it doesn't matter if they have been
franked.
Happy
Stamp Collecting!
It's
also a good way of recycling and being environmentally friendly!
.
ANYONE
FOR CRICKET?
Click on www.srilankadirect.org
web
site to find out more. There is a great video to watch also.
Graham
from Sri Lanka Direct.org is in Sri Lanka at the moment watching the
cricket. Read all about his trip in the New Year. Watch this
space!
We
welcome any contact or news from our readers. We will help answer
any questions you may have or put you in touch with other organisations who
are also helping. We travel to Sri Lanka annually so have first
hand knowledge and experience of what is going on over there. We
have Sri Lankan contacts who source projects needing support and we try
to help where other organisations are not.
..............................................................................................................................
(older
news)
Container
update -28th Feb 07
I
write with mixed feelings, but I am relieved to tell you that the
container of aid has now arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka with special
thanks to Mr Aruna David of Regal Distribution for his assistance by
rescuing the container from Southampton Docks and dealing with the
necessary paperwork. We also need to say a big thank you to Sue at
Image Line for her valuable assistance and for Martin Roebuck of
International Freight Weekly for his help. Unbelievably the Sri
Lankan Government have taxed us just just under £2000 to import the
aid! What a mad world we live in. To make matters worse they
have confiscated the printers, fax machines and telephones! We
have had to pay the fees amounting to £2000 out of our own pocket so desperately
need your support to help pay us back.
For
us its a very sad start to 2007
As
I write this update to you I can hardly believe this has happened to us
but it would appear that the shipping company we paid to ship the
container has not honored its commitment and the container is sitting in
the docks incurring storage charges in Southampton. We are trying
to get our money back but the company refuse to answer their phones or
return our emails. It's hard to believe that there are companies
out there who will willingly take money from a charity knowing it can
not provide the service. We are now having a launch a new appeal
to raise in the region of £1800 to send the container! Can you
help? Can you do a collection for us at work? Can you hold a
car boot on our behalf? Anyway you can help us raise this money
will be so appreciated.
Nicki
Farthing (Trustee and Founder and very upset!)
FOLLOW
UP FROM OUR URGENT
APPEAL
With
hard work and generous donations we are delighted to inform you that we
have raised over £1000 to ship our container of aid in the New
Year. The children can look forward to computers, school
equipment, books, toys, clothing, shoes and bikes. The adults can
look forward to kitchen equipment, bikes, sewing machines, T.V.'s,
radio's and mobile phones. Our grateful thanks to everyone.
The container will be packed on Friday 5th January 2007 all being
well. We are busy doing the final bits of packing. Watch
this space for an update in the New Year.
We
must acknowledge the generous help received by Colin at Cad Services in
Catford, London and Mark Langham, The Manager of The Park Inn, in York
for donating between them over 40 computers and other computer
equipment. Also a huge thank you to Kersley Grange Primary School
and Allesley Park School in Coventry for their generous donations.
Thank you's are also sent to the many hundreds of donations from you
all. A large thank you to CCS Storage who gave us storage space
and our neighbours for allowing us to store our items in their garages.
It is very difficult to thank everyone personally but a special thanks
goes to Save The Children, Leamington Spa branch for their support,
Clarion Events for allowing us to have a charity stand at The
International Caravan and Motorhome Show at Birmingham in October
and
E.
G. Skett for their continued support in giving us free stands at our
local Christmas Market.
.....................................................................................................
REPORT
ON OUR LAST AID TRIP TO
SRI LANKA MAY/JUNE 06
Rebuilding
is noticeably happening but still slow, there are still many families living in
tin roof sheds without homes to move to. We aim to make a difference to families still affected by the
Tsunami, who are still living in temporary emergency shelters with little or no outside help.
We
are busy fundraising to finance a nursery school and training of two teachers in Matara
southern Sri Lanka.
STOP
PRESS
We
have just supplied the funding for the nursery equipment, photographs
will follow. We have also trained two teachers.
We
are sponsoring a 13 year old girl named Sanuri. Just £15 a month
ensures she receives a healthy diet and educational resource funding
such as books and clothing.
We
are very keen to find sponsors who would like to do the same, there are
many children desperately needing our help.
Contact
us to set up a standing order.
We are
committed to funding the provision of toilets for 17 families. The
families have been provided with new homes but without any
sanitation. We need to raise funds to build these toilets as
soon as possible.
We have met up with the Hemachandra family who lost their house
and tragically their mother and grandmother. We are helping with the
rebuilding of their house and the furnishing of the
house once completed.
We
are in the process of linking School children in the Midlands with
Sri
Lankan children.
We
are accepting cash donations no matter how small.
We
are also appealing for new soft toys and unwanted gift for our tombola stalls.
OUR
THANKS TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS
For
your invaluable help and support in our fundraising
PRESS
CUTTINGS
See a clip of our interview on BBC TV.
VISIT
SRI LANKA IN 2007/8
Support
the people as a tourist visit 'a land like no other' and help the people get
their livelihoods back
Help
us fundraise, book your holiday through our webshop
OR
YOUR
CRICKET HOLIDAY THROUGH WWW.SRILANKADIRECT.ORG
There
are a number of big name travel agents supporting our fundraising. With the
arrival of Thomson Flights and Portland Direct in our webshop we now have more
agents offering holidays to more countries.
If you, your family or relatives are planning to take a holiday have a look at
www.buy.at/supportsrilankafoundation
and we'll earn commission! Yes, by simply booking your holiday via our website
we will receive a donation for our causes. That's great news. HAVE A
GREAT HOLIDAY!
Please
help us in any way you can every little helps and with us goes a long way.
The
People of Sri Lanka Need Your Help
Nearly
3 years on the Sri Lankan people
are still in desperate need. They are living in difficult conditions in tents,
timber or corrugated tin sheds with little or no means to restore their
livelihoods. We founded this charity to aid the people directly in getting
back their lives.
The tsunami of 26th
December 2004 caused enormous devastation to Sri Lanka, Killing 31,000 people
and displacing 500,000 people. 150,000 homes & 200 schools were damaged or
completely washed away. Most of the coastal villages in the south and east of
Sri Lanka have been completely destroyed. The devastation stretches 1000km,
which is approx. 70 % of the Sri Lankan coastline. The most affected sectors are
the coastal livelihoods, dependant largely on fisheries, tourism, agriculture
and small businesses; total job losses are estimated at over 380,000.
The
need to do more to help these people has totally overwhelmed Nicki and Jonathan
and they pledge to continue their support.
Support
Sri Lanka Foundation
has been set up with the desire to assist towards giving aid and helping to
rebuild coastal parts of the country, enabling the people living in these areas
to regain their livelihoods.
OUR THIRD AID CONTAINER BEING LOADED FOR SRI
LANKA (July 2005)
 
Our
third container left on Friday 22nd July 05 and arrived around the 24th September
05 with the
help of the Sikh relief organisation, K-Line and Metro shipping.
Home
About
Us Press Fundraising
Our Projects Donations
Gallery Supporters
Diaries Merchandise
Webshop Contact
Us Visit Sri
Lanka Links
Just
some of the boats we have purchased with money raised
find
out more
 
STOP
PRESS Visit
Our new Webshop
    
And many other supporters.
By ordering through
our web site we will receive a commission from the company! Easy for you
and even better for us. Even TESCO home deliveries will donate to our
causes just by you doing your shopping! You can be supporting us and it
not even costing you a penny!
Asian
Tsunami - Boxing Day 2004. Why we are here!
Map
of damage stats by affected areas. The figures speak for themselves.
Click
here or on map to see a larger
version open in a new window.
SRI
LANKA tsunami damage stats
(figures taken from official records)
The tsunami that struck on December 26, 2004, hit a
relatively narrow, but long strip of land stretching over 1,000 km
(approximately 70 percent of Sri Lanka's coastline). The statistics below
indicate the extent of the impact:
- Dead: 31,000
- Missing: 5,600
- Injured: More than 15,000
- Internally displaced:
500,000
- Total affected: 1 million (5 percent) of a total population of
19 million. Over half of affected districts are in areas touched by the
North-East conflict.
- Most affected sectors:
coastal livelihoods, dependent largely on fisheries, tourism, agriculture,
and small businesses; total job losses are estimated at 380,000.
- Damage to infrastructure:
approaching 150,000 homes, 200 educational institutions, and 100 health
facilities. Railway, power, telecommunications, water supply, and fishing
ports also suffered significant damage.
Long-term
impact:
an additional 250,000 people will fall below the poverty line, and poverty will
deepen for thousands already suffering from over two decades of war.
Thank
you for visiting the homepage of our website, please browse all the other pages.
We
will be adding regular updates to all our pages so do come back soon.
Home
About
Us Press Fundraising
Our Projects Donations
Gallery Supporters
Diaries Merchandise
Webshop Contact
Us Visit Sri
Lanka Links
©
Support Sri Lanka Foundation 2005 webmaster@supportsrilanka.net
Registered Charity No.
1111896
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