Supporting Orphans in Hambantota

The Southbank community is always raising money for good causes. Occasionally we commit to long-term support - our work for the Mwereni School for the Blind in Tanzania is a well-known project, but we are also still supporting orphans from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which killed more than 180,000 people in southeast Asia.

Former Kensington Principal Gary Winning arranged to support 55 orphans in Hambantota. The area is about 210km south of Colombo and is in one of the country's most remote and poorest regions. It was one of the many communities that were devastated with 5100 deaths and nearly 17,000 families affected by loss of life, property or livelihood. Nearly 400 children in the area were orphaned (lost one or both parents).

Our ongoing commitment to support the orphans, who are aged between five and 11 years old, means they are able to stay with family instead of being placed in an orphanage and becoming wards of the state. Our support, about £76 per child per year, also helps them continue with their education.

This year, our third year of commitment, has seen various Student Council initiatives and a t-shirt sale resulting in more than £4700 being raised.

In addition to the monies raised by Kensington, the PTAs on all three campuses made a separate commitment to help fund a planned community centre. At the 2006 PTA Winter Benefit enough money was raised to help build the centre, establish an IT lab and pay operating costs for the centre during its first two years of operation. The centre became fully operational in June 2007.

The Koholankala Children's Centre is a drop-in centre, open six days a week. It houses an IT lab, community hall, and fledgling library as well as lavatories, a small kitchen, and an office for counselling. It currently serves 278 children. In addition to graphics and other tutoring programmes, it offers music, art and drama classes. All the children are monitored by nine volunteers who do home visits, keep tabs on the children's physical and mental health and talk to their teachers. There are also three paid administrators who operate the centre and maintain the IT lab and other equipment.