By Salik Ansar | External Consultant
Time flies! Sri Lanka is recovering. In our last report, we told you about the dire situation the country is currently facing. With the help of other countries (including India and China) and international bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Sri Lanka is slowly heading towards greener pastures away from the economic crisis. While prices of goods and vegetables are still expensive, the fuel shortage has been addressed with proper planning and regulations. Likewise, tourism is gradually returning. Sri Lanka looks to be on the right upward track!
Due to the economic crisis, our non-profit has initiated a sister project to “Investing in Communities to Conserve Elephants” called “Emergency Relief for Rural Sri Lankan Households” because we recognized the struggles rural communities were facing. Relief efforts are happening all around Sri Lanka, however, none specifically focused on farming communities that are affected by human-elephant conflict. The farming sector has been heavily affected, with some even deciding to forego farming due to lack of resources and very little yields.
We’ve therefore chosen to focus on our sister project and retire this project until work on the ground can resume (hopefully in 2023). We want to extend a heartfelt thank you from T&L and from the rural Sri Lankans you’ve helped as part of both amazing projects. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Today, as this project is being retired, we would like to tell you that 120 dry rations packages have now been delivered to beneficiaries in Sri Lanka as part of our Emergency Relief project. With the help of GlobalGiving donors, we’ve thus provided a month’s dry rations worth $30 per box to over 120 households. Each package contains essentials such as rice, canned goods, and pulses that can feed family of four to eight for a month.
For our field team, distributing dry rations has been meaningful and fulfilling work. They are eager to deliver the next round of 60 packages by the end of the month! With this in mind, we wanted to share how they felt during this project.
Sameera, our Project Coordinator and team leader for this specific project, felt touched and grateful that Trunks & Leaves initiated this project. He reiterated that this was the ideal time to provide relief. Many of the recipients shared stories that were heartbreaking. Sameera provided comfort to these families not only by distributing packages, but also by listening and letting the families know that many care and want to lend a helping hand. Sameera stated that our aid will go a long way for them. During one such distribution, despite having so little themselves, an elderly lady insisted that the team stay and eat at her house before they continue their distribution. “This lady looked at us like how a mother will look after her child,” Sameera said. There are many kindhearted people around Udawalawe and the team has bore witness to their generosity through this project.
Janaka and Kumara, our two field officers, shared similar stories. They stated that the project helped them see the difficult realities these communities faced and that it motivated them to do better.
According to Kumara: “Most of these people have no proper shelter or roof above their head, no proper clothing, no medications for diseases, and not even proper food on the table. To help these people fix at least one of their problems temporarily, or to even bring a smile onto their faces was one of our biggest accomplishments. To have been a part of this project gives me immense happiness.”
Your donations are what propels us to continue our work, so thank you! You can continue supporting our work with these front-line communities who co-exist with elephants by following and contributing to our Emergency Relief for Rural Sri Lankan Households project here.Keep posted for stories from our next deliveries!
We're also starting to return to the park!
Now that our field team can access fuel again, they're returning to the Udawalawe National Park, on the lookout for the elephants! Kumara, our Research Supervisor, and Janaka, our Field Technician, are excited to be able to visit the park again and hope to bring joyful news of any new calves for our demography database. We hope to share details of any new calves soon as candidates for adoption.
In the meantime, our current cohort of calves are still available for adoption. Each adoption kit is a virtual adoption of a real individual from our study population. Each year we release a new cohort of calves who can only be adopted for a limited time. You can now learn more about the elephants we're all so passionate to conserve or gift a kit for someone wild about wildlife in your life!
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