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Ceylon Christian Care |
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News |
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April 5th, 2006 Visit Report Opening day care center, Start building school, New village project
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Dear friends,
During the week of March 20th another visit was made to Sri Lanka. Attendees were the boardmembers of CCC Laurens van der Tang and Herman van der Weerd and the businessman Herman Bennink with his wife Marjolein of Marshoek BV and Evert de Blok of Coas Software Systems BV from the Netherlands. Goals of this visit: · To declare open the new children’s Day Care Center in the village Periyaneelavanai · Laying of the foundation stone of the new Christian English Medium School in Batticaloa · To research the possibility to start a “Community Based Development Project” in a village were people live under extremely poor conditions
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Laurens van der Tang, Herman Bennink, Evert de Blok and Herman van der Weerd |
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Opening of the new Day Care Center in Periyaneelavanai Now one year and three months after the Tsunami the rebuilding activities on the compound of Ceylon Christian Care have come to an end. On Tuesday March 21st we have declared open the new Day Care Center. The previous one was destroyed by the Tsunami of Dec 2004. The money for rebuilding was donated by the Dutch foundation “Bijzondere Noden of the Gereformeerde Gemeenten”. This building will be used for three purposes: 1. Day Care Centre for the children of the widows and the destitute poor During the day care will be taken for these children. See for this work also “Day Care Centre”. 2. Training Centre for the ladies of the village. After the children have gone home sewing classes are organized for the ladies of the village. With this knowledge they can save costs and/or earn additional income. 3. Meeting centre for the widows joining the widows micro credit program There are now four groups of about 13 widows joining the widow’s micro credit program. This program helps them to generate income for themselves and their children. Every Saturday one of these groups meets together in this building to discuss their progress and to learn from each other. See for this topic also “Widows Project”. |
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Opening by Laurens van der Tang |
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The new Day Care Center |
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Talking with Widows and Children |
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That day we also brought into use the new Belfry located close to the church. This Belfry will sound every day at 6:00 in the morning and 18:00 in the afternoon. This is a call to prayer. On Sundays the bell will sound as a call to come to church. |
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The new Belfry |
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Herman brings the Belfry into use |
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On Sunday March 18th we joined the service in the church. That Sunday beside the children of the homes about 50 families joined the service. Rev. Selvantha told that due to the tsunami help of Ceylon Christian Care and Woord en Daad many people are touched by the Gospel and come to church on Sunday. The house rebuilding activities in Periyaneelavanai will continue at least for one more year. At this moment already 180 house, sponsored by Ceylon Christian Care and Woord en Daad, are delivered to affected families.
Laying of the foundation stone of the new Christian English Medium School On Wednesday the foundation stone was placed by Herman Bennink and Evert de Blok. Their companies are the main sponsors behind this new school. Goal of this school is to provide on the east side of Sri Lanka high quality education. And Christianity education. Both are missing today. Children are the future of a country. This is why good quality education is important. The same is valid for Christianity education. It is a given that most people are converted before the age of 18. This school will be built on the compound of the VTC in Batticaloa and it is the intention to integrate this school with this VTC. See for more information “Christian English Medium School”. |
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Herman Bennink and Evert de Blok laying the foundation stone |
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Start of a new “Community Based Developement Project” This is a new project which will focus on villages with people which do not have placed their feet on the first step of the “development ladder”. These are the people struggling for live. All money they earn is consumed and they do not come further. In general these are the people living in rural areas and who have an average income per head less than 1 US$/day. Example: A family exists of a man, a woman and 5 children (7 people). If the man is the only person who generates income and he earns 3 US$/day than the average income is 3/7 is 0.43 US$ per person per day. This is not enough to purchase food for one day. The reason that these people do not come up in life is not that they are lazy. These people are trapped in a situation they are not able to come out without help. On Monday Evert, Herman and Rev Jeyanesan discussed together about this problem. Before this visit we did read the book “The end of poverty” of Prof Jeffrey Sachs. We discussed how we could help people to come out of this trap. Monday afternoon we visited the village Murokkodanchenai. In this village about 450 families live under very poor conditions. Their houses are made of mud and palm tree leaves. People sleep in these huts just on the sandy soil. They drink the water from the ponds in the village. Due to this unhygienic situation all villagers have worms. A high percentage of children die in their first years. There are no sanitary facilities. People go into the bush to do their call of nature. At night this gives other problems. There is no light and it happens regularly that young women are attacked, raped and murdered. This village has also suffered from the civil war and the tsunami. There are more than 100 widows. Their husbands were killed in the civil war. We found in several huts photo’s of killed child soldiers. With the tsunami the fisherman lost all their properties however no organization had helped them sofar. That afternoon we studied the economical situation of the villagers and they were bad. The income of a long day working was 50 SRp (half a US$). From our conversation with the villagers we learned what the problem was. With the tsunami the fisherman lost all their properties: boats, nets, etc. For the purchase of new nets they have taken a loan from someone. Now they have to sell the fish they catch to that person however for a price below the real value of the fish. They have come in a downward spiral they cannot come out themselves anymore. We have spoken with the people of that village, we have visited their houses and we have analyzed the way they live. Every morning from Monday till Wednesday we have joined fisherman to look how they catch the fish, what they earn, what the middleman earns and finally the trader. As expected the money was made by the middle man and the traders. They make the money from several hundreds of SRp till some thousands per day. The fisherman was the looser. He earns 50-100 SRp a day. |
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The villagers of Murokkodanchenai |
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The huts of Murokkodanchenai |
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Baking cookies on the street |
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A young family before their hut |
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Killed child soldier - 12 years old |
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Women coming back from a long day fishing (6:00 till 17:00), earning 50 SRp each |
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That evening/night Evert processed all the data in a spreadsheet and did we discuss about the options. On Tuesday we did the same session again with the total team (Herman Bennink and his wife Marjolein came on Monday evening, Laurens arrived Tuesday afternoon). On Wednesday we have visited the village again and presented our plans. For this visit we had invited all the villagers. The plan is that help this village with a plan with 4 phases during a period of 3 years. The points we will focus on are: · Water, sanitation and hygiene · Nutrition and health care · Education · Infrastructure · Income development While working on all these topics we will also tell the people the message of the Gospel. At the end of that day the people were very, very happy.
Visit of families of the children of our homes During this visit we have also spent time to visit some families of the children of the homes. These families live in the rural areas, often more than 10 km from a school and hospital. There is no public transport. Children do not go to school. When people get seriously ill they die because they are not able to go to the hospital. Here we have analyzed the situations too and to set up a plan to help these families. |
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A boy of Boys Home Samuel with his (sick) father and mother before their clay hut |
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Thursday afternoon we had a meeting with a lawyer in Colombo. Goal is to establish a counter foundation on Sri Lanka that will care for our investments in that country. The name of this foundation will be “Ladder of Hope”. This name is based on the story in the Bible were Jacob saw a ladder from the earth into heaven when he ran away for his brother Esau. It is our wish that through the cooperation between this foundation and Ceylon Christian Care people on Sri Lanka may put their feet on the first rung of the ladder of development in a spiritual and material way and develop in a future for this and after this life. During the evenings we also spent time with the children of the homes in Periyaneelavanai. The children always enjoy if there are visitors from abroad. The last evening we played “tug of war” with the children. (We trained ourselves the days before when we helped the fisherman pulling their nets on the land). And we had good talks with the staff. |
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Helping the fisherman to pull the nets to the beach |
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Teaching the children “Tug of War” |
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This visit again we finalized and initiated projects. As human beings we can work hard however in all this we need the blessing of our Lord. We ask you to remember this work in your prayers.
Your sincerely, Herman van der Weerd Ceylon Christian Care |
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Presentation of the plan to the villagers |