Rebuild Sri Lanka: The Power of Private Initiative

Sri Lankan women work to rebuild their community. Photo: Jeff Greenwald for Mercy Corps.

Rebuild Sri Lanka is today one of the most powerful non-governmental organizations in the country. On the morning of December 26, 2004, it did not exist. The afternoon following the tsunami, a cadre of close friends in Colombo’s high-powered business community began telephoning each other, inspired by a passionate need to serve.

“Some of us were business people, some were doctors, some were lawyers,” says Sivaji De Zoysa, an intense and articulate young executive at Associated Motorways Ltd. “We came together to talk about needs. That discussion went on to identify four of the most affected areas in our country. We decided to begin with a private initiative – and during the first two weeks, we raised about $100,000. All of it came from personal contributions, and donations from our close friends and relations.”

After a highly successful program, which provided food to tens of thousands of families, Rebuild Sri Lanka turned to other organizations for help – including Mercy Corps, who lent financial assistance to the group using funds provided by the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

One of the first projects funded was a large-scale distribution of non-food items to the welfare centers around Arugam Bay, on the country’s southeast coast. Arugam Bay lies on the seashore of Ampara District, a mainly Muslim community. Nearly one-third of Sri Lanka’s tsunami-related deaths occurred in this area. Thousands of children lost at least one parent, and some 185,000 people lost their homes and livelihoods.

The region’s fishing villages, seafood cafés and tourist bungalows were shattered by the tsunami. Wandering along the formerly vibrant beaches to the north and south of Arugam Bay during early January was an unforgettable experience, with crushed homes and businesses offering mute testimony to the awful force of the waves.

During their first distribution, Rebuild Sri Lanka realized some remarkable innovations.

“Our first few distributions of food and water,“ recalls De Zoysa, “we sent out many plastic-wrapped rations. By our next visit, the camps resembled trash dumps. So we purchased trash bags, distributed those as well, and told the families in the camps that we would only hand out food packs in return for a trash bag full of plastic garbage. We used the trucks that carried the food to the camps to bring the trash bags back to Colombo.” Mercy Corps funded this second distribution of trash bags along with many of the supplies.

A second innovation by Rebuild Sri Lanka were yellow “ration cards” that were printed and distributed to villagers. Intended as food-rationing cards, these cards eventually were used for everything, from hurricane lamps to volleyballs. The cards were an ingenious, effective and simple way to keep track of who received what. They helped ensure equality within the camps, and discouraged abuse of the distribution system.

The centerpiece project linking Rebuild Sri Lanka and Mercy Corps, however, was a far-reaching effort to provide the children in the Ampara region with school supplies.

“Getting children back to school represents the single most effective remedy in helping them cope with the enormity of the catastrophe that has so radically altered their lives,” said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s representative in Sri Lanka. With help from Mercy Corps, Rebuild Sri Lanka was able to distribute essential school supplies to a total of 7,626 young students.

“With Mercy Corps’ help, we provided school kits designed for different levels,” de Zoysa says with evident pride. “Each of four age groups got a different pack. The 3-to-5 age group, for example, received crayons and drawing books, while the 9-to-12 level got exercise books, pencils and sharpeners, and other needed supplies, delivered in a book bag – Barbie bags for girls, and Spiderman bags for the boys.”

What makes the rebuild Sri Lanka story so compelling is the fact that De Zoysa and his colleagues began their organization on force of will alone.

“None of us had done an ounce of humanitarian or social work before. Nothing. The reason we’ve been so successful is that we run the effort the same way we run our businesses. We use ‘task-driven’ attitude in our programs. We don’t dictate, or guess, what our target communities need; we work with them from the start. Not only that; with every program we conduct, we make sure that what we’re doing can be sustained by the communities, by themselves, once we - and the other donors - pull out.”

Rebuild Sri Lanka began with little more than a vision, shared by a highly dynamic group of friends. Mercy Corps recognized their potential and was proud to assist their success.