MAHAYAMA SCHOOL

Mahayama School was one of many schools affected by the Tsunami although it was not extensively damaged there was still some work to do to freshen it up for the children. A.R.C along with funding from the Ladies College in Guernsey built a new classroom and supplied the school with two new computers.  However, once we had started working there we were soon aware that other charities were also ploughing money into this school, mainly an Austrian charity and whilst we were there an opening ceremony was held which the Austrian Prime Minister attended. Because this school had other charities helping we decided to pull out.  It is quite common in Sri Lanka for projects to have two or three NGO’s (Non Government Organisation’s) helping in one place, so wherever possible on projects as large as this we like to ensure that we are the only charity undertaking work on any particular project. This way we can take full responsibility for it.

At this point we decided to take what funds we had (with the exception of donations from Ladies College) to other schools who were in a worse off situation and we knew would benefit from help when other charities had bypassed them.