WEEKEND AT COLOMBO

This weekend we have taken advantage of the four day long weekend to go to the Colombo area for a few days. The distances we need to travel are not long but it always takes a long time due to the traffic and the poor road conditions.

One of our stops was an English class that is being run for disadvantaged children. This is one of about six that we are involved in, which are being run in different parts of the country. Teachers are voluntary and the majority have no teacher training. The classes vary in size and age. There could be between five and thirty children in each class and the children tend to be between the ages of six and sixteen years old. This particular lady opens her house every Saturday and holds four classes over the day, each one lasting an hour and a half. She also runs other after-school classes during the week.

Our role this weekend was to observe a class to see how it runs. In the future we will bring these volunteers together and give them some training and ideas to make their job easier. We also want to give them access to educational resources, being that the children can not afford extra learning materials.

We also spent time purchasing material for the resource library. We will loan out resources to community groups that could not otherwise afford them. We hope to have books, games, toys, educational aids and personal development resources available. So we went trawling through book stores at two of the big three shopping centres in Colombo; Majestic City and Crescat. Book stores should not be confused with book shops - the latter selling only stationary and school supplies. We were busy collecting posters, educational toys and flash cards on homophones, antonyms and sentence sructure. I thought antonyms ate ants - I am learning so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As always, we got to visit communities - seeing and hearing about the poverty and difficulties that these people face. One young boy we were introduced to suffers from autism. The family can not afford profesional help in managing this condition. He is only seven, but is becoming a danger to his young sisters and mother as a result of his violent rages. Mental health is so often overlooked here and the families are left to struggle on their own. Although we are unskilled to directly help this family, stories such as this serve to inspire us to do the most with what we have and encourage others to do the same with what they have.