Seenigama, Sports and the Foundation of Goodness

Like so many others I was drawn to Seenigama following the terrible tsunami disaster on 26 December 2004. By then I had already booked myself a ticket to travel around the world for 8 months taking a career break from my job in London (starting Feb 05). Sri Lanka was always to be part of the trip, I had visited before with my mum who was born in Colombo and grew up on a tea estate near Ratnapura. Feeling helpless after watching news of the tsunami, my first reaction was to cancel the rest of my trip and head straight to Sri Lanka. However, after much thought, and some good advice from friends and colleagues, I felt that Sri Lanka may be more in need of help once the initial affects of the disaster had gone from the media’s eye, when there would still be much to do. Months later, through a friend in Australia, I contacted Kushil and consequently arrived in Seenigama in the middle of August to a typically hot and sticky day!

On arrival in Seenigama you are automatically aware that it is an exceptional place and I was lucky enough to spend three unforgettable months volunteering there. When I arrived at the Foundation I felt a warmth I’ve not come across before. I was struck by the fact that these people had been through horrors I couldn’t begin to imagine yet they smiled, they laughed, they had an incredible harmony and an aura of hope. This was a sense of community that my home in the UK lost a long time ago. Walking into the Foundation’s centre I was shocked as I looked at the walls high above me and saw the tsunami water mark - I wondered how anyone had survived. However, the collective spirit around the Foundation of Goodness has helped rebuild lives and livelihoods in an incredible way. There are so many amazing projects being run out of the Foundation that it would be impossible to describe them all. The overwhelming response from people coming to volunteer has been exceptional and some very special people have helped and supported Seenigama this past year - Jill, Nick, Cynthia, Lorna, Rashmini, Rushmi and Shane to name a few.

As a volunteer you are really welcomed into the community, and your time is totally appreciated whether it’s for a couple of weeks or a few months. However, as Nick mentioned, you can't expect things to be handed to you on a plate and it can take a couple of weeks to work out how you are going to fit in and be useful. My roles were varied at first and one thing I was to learn is that no day is ever the same in Sri Lanka! For me it was more about timing than anything else. I arrived a couple of weeks before the Foundation said its sad farewells to Jill. My first two weeks were spent in Seenigama helping with Kids Corner – art and drama therapy for kids and a lot of fun!, and helping in general such as working with the translator Thushara or helping other volunteers with their work. However, after Jill left there was a huge amount to do in the Colombo office before Lauren arrived (the new Oz Youth Ambassador taking over from Jill) so I headed to the big smoke to help out there. I extended my trip to Sri Lanka for an extra month and spent my time from September onwards yo-yoing between Colombo and Seenigama and loved every minute of it!

In Colombo I helped Kushil with the multitude of thank you letters that are sent out to our donors, although not the most exciting of tasks this was actually really interesting - until then I hadn’t realised just how much we were getting from donors or how. There were some incredibly humbling stories about how people donated – Duncan and Jody from the UK who asked people to donate rather than give them engagement presents; David in Australia who has found every which way to fund raise on a continuing basis; school kids in London who raised money through a sponsored spelling test; individuals and organisations from all over the world who had given as much as they could in order to help those worse off than themselves. As well as having contact with donors I enjoyed writing the website cover story every week. Though no IT expert I do enjoy writing and it was wonderful to be able to find new stories each week to put on the website, there were many to choose from and it was often a tough task to prioritise the main story each week, though I sometimes cheated and wrote two in one. Working in the Colombo office was fun, hard work and constantly busy. However, my work in Seenigama was just as manic as I started to set up an exciting new sports project there.

Sports

Just after I arrived at the Foundation in August we had been awarded funding from Laureus Sport for Good Foundation to run a year-long sports project within Seenigama and 6 of its surrounding villages. This was to be the main project for me whilst I was in the village working with 2 incredibly talented and dedicated guys from Seenigama – Asanka and Thushara, both wonderful people and excellent sportsmen. Every week I took the bus from Colombo to Seenigama where the bulk of my volunteering work was to be – a roller coaster of a ride along the stunning coastal Galle Road where you have to bravely jump out of the bus at the top of the road in Seenigama.

I had no idea how good these guys were at sports until I started this project. Sitting in our new ‘sports office’ (the old medicine store at the Foundation) I’d watch them all play volleyball out of the window while I worked away on my laptop. There are some incredibly talented players in Seenigama and the surrounding villages, and let’s not forget the girls – their volleyball teams played some very competitive and outstanding matches. There’s also some amazing talent on the cricket pitch and the athletics field, plus excellent swimmers, and some up and coming sports men and women in badminton and netball.

With all this local talent and enthusiasm for sport, Asanka, Thushara and I knew that we had to provide a great sports programme for the year to build on the current talent and to entice new players into the games. To plan the project we had to look at the budget first - factoring in costs of uniforms, equipment, pitch upgrades, hire, referee costs, coach costs, and numbers of participants for each sport. Asanka and Thushara went to all the local schools and village sports clubs to gather info on players and what sports people were interested in playing. We narrowed it down to an initial 8 sports – volleyball, beach volleyball, softball cricket, athletics, sea and pool swimming, badminton and netball. Once we had discussed all the details I got to work putting it into a year plan to work from and got to grips with how our budget would spread over the year. The boys got to work by spreading the word amongst the local village sports clubs and schools and gathering info on teams, convenient days to play competitions, etc.. ‘Seenigama Sports’ was up and running by mid-September and started off with volleyball competitions which seemed to happen on an almost daily basis to fit in all the teams (and still do!). The following month we had more competitions – in addition to volleyball, a 5 mile x-country race and a 100m sea-swimming race. ….and the sports continue every month with new sports such as badminton, softball cricket and beach volleyball being played on a regular basis.

You may be wondering how this project has helped a tsunami affected village in a disadvantaged rural community? The project had an impact that even I couldn’t believe – the young people in the villages from all ages were motivated and invigorated by participating in the various sports. Taking part helped to build their confidence and improve their team building skills and gave them more of an opportunity to meet up with their friends. Not only has Seenigama Sports had a huge impact on the kids it has also benefited the communities as a whole getting people actively participating in their community again and interacting with folk from other villages. One volleyball match we held at night had 2 villages supporting their teams, with fathers, mothers, grandparents, babies, brothers and sisters all cheering on their players – 2 rows deep around the pitch. It was an electric atmosphere and an event I was very proud to be part of.

The proof in the pudding, or the ball in the back of the net, came when I was able to see the reaction of our funders as they visited the project in early December. Laureus Sport for Good Foundation brought 2 of their Academy Members – the famous cricketers Steve Waugh and Kapil Dev – for a visit with 2-day packed itinerary to see Seenigama Sports in action and how it was impacting the villages. Sadly our main ambassador from Laureus – Ian Botham – couldn’t make it for personal reasons but we were assured he was keen to return in the new year. I came back from the UK for a week for the Laureus visit and was very proud to see how impressed they were with what we have achieved. (They have recently extended our funding to the end of 2006 which is fantastic news and all credit to Asanka and Thushara for all their hard work.) On the sad and inevitable day that I had to leave the village one of them said to me that as well as bringing sport to the village I had encouraged the young people to stop drinking, stop smoking and compete in sport instead. If this is even remotely true, my time in Seenigama made a difference and that is what is behind volunteering – working hard with the Foundation and the villagers on projects that will have an impact and help improve their quality of life.

If you want to volunteer be prepared for hard work, long hours, long weeks, unpredictability and working within the frustrations of “Sri Lanka time”. However, you will get a huge amount out of being there - the people are amazing, the Foundation’s work is humbling and on top of everything else it is incredibly rewarding and a lot of fun. Leaving Seenigama was extremely difficult and saying good bye to Asanka, Thushara and all my friends there was one of the hardest things I have had to do. Leaving Colombo was tough too and having returned to the UK and I’m still writing the monthly reports for Seenigama Sports and have regular email and text contact with all my friends in the village and Colombo. As with many volunteers before me I still feel very much part of the family there – this is an exceptional charity and Seenigama an incredible place.

Faye Ruck-Nightingale
London, UK
FOG volunteer August – November 2005