Critical Assistance to Sri Lankan Communities

This man and his child are residents of the refugee camp in Nilaweli, Sri Lanka, where a Mercy Corps-funded program helped restore access to well water. Photo: Jeff Greenwald/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps staff is partnering with local organizations to mount a sustained, efficient response to Sri Lanka's greatest needs. Current operations include rebuilding of water and sanitation facilities, re-supplying schools with teaching materials and sports equipment, trauma counseling, clean up efforts and programming designed to revitalize local economies and livelihoods. These and other projects have benefited more than 610,000 Sri Lankans.

In early March, Mercy Corps approved two new projects in the hard-hit city of Trincomalee: one will provide nets and bicycles to prawn fishermen who live more than two miles inland, and the other will fund two cash-for-work cleanup programs organized by a fledgling community-based organization whose capacity Mercy Corps hopes to build as recovery efforts in the area deepen. More than 5,100 Sri Lankans currently participate in Mercy Corps cash-for-work programs.

Much of our efforts focus on meeting the needs of Sri Lanka's most vulnerable survivors: children. In Ampara district, Mercy Corps and local partners provided school kits (which include uniforms, pencils and notebooks) to more than 5,000 children. Elsewhere, innovative counseling programs are helping child survivors cope with their losses. In the largest of three current counseling projects, Mercy Corps is training 650 teachers and social workers in active listening and psychosocial support to children in schools and welfare centers.

Mercy Corps staff recently helped hotel owners in Trincomalee, a town on the Bay of Bengal that relies heavily on tourism, form an association that will address marketing, regulations and other industry issues. More than 50 people attended the organization's initial meeting on February 26, where a multi-ethnic slate of officers was elected.

Grants to local organizations, many supporting children's programs, are an ongoing part of our work in Sri Lanka. Here are some of Mercy Corps' other operations in Sri Lanka:

• Distributing fishing kits to 300 lagoon fishermen
• Providing materials to reconstruct two preschools in the Pottuvil area, where nearly 90 percent of the village’s fishing fleet was destroyed
• Including women in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program in Jayangar by employing them to provide meals and tea for clean-up workers
• Helping to fund the repair of seven large fishing boats, each with a crew of more than 60 people - over 400 jobs in all
• Giving 12 sewing machines to groups of women to sew new uniforms for students and provide the women with the means for future income generation
• Distributing school materials to over 200 children and bicycles to 28 teachers
• Setting up 10 water distribution points in Arugam Bay to ensure families have access to clean water