Train 155 Youth to Teach 2325 Sri Lankan Children

Dear All,

Thank you for your support for our work to train young people to enable them to teach children in their communities. This report is to update you on the progress we have made in starting the project, and also to give you an update on the security situation in the country, how that is impacting on delivery and what we are doing to ensure we create change.

On Easter Sunday, homegrown Islamist extremists detonated eight bombs targeting Christians in churches and tourists in luxury hotels. The government response was poor to non-existent and that has allowed the growing wave of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism to exert its influence. The communal violence has led to curfews due to attacks on mosques and Muslim businesses in certain regions and more widespread individual acts of harassment and assault of individual Muslims.

The overall situation has been intensified by a terrorist 'safe house' with blueprints of 30 local government schools being found within 5km of one of our centres. This has led to increased security and our Zonal Education Director asking us to postpone the start of our Community English Programme until further notice. We believe this to be at least until September 2019. 

We are using this delay to embed peace and reconciliation activities in the Community English Programme. This programme was going to start with 15 minutes of general ice-breaker activities and end with 15 minutes of fun games. Instead, we are going to deliver short, fun sessions on diversity and ethnic cohesion in these moments. We are doing this in response to the communal tensions that gain hold easily and quickly in a country where children of different ethnicities are educated separately. This results in 70% of Sri Lankan youth not having a friend outside of their ethnic group.

This is a terrible situation that the country is still coming to terms with, and one that has delayed the start of our programme. However, it has given us the time and space to tailor our programme so that whilst children are learning vital English, they are also developing a greater understanding of how diversity is something to be proud of and celebrate.

The overall aims and outcomes will remain the same and we will soon start the training of our main diploma students in how to teach Basic English to kids. We will though, gain a greater impact by focusing the available 'downtime' and create games and activities that bring a greater understanding of others. We are doing this because we believe that real-life experiences have the ability to overcome inherited prejudices.