Colombo, Sri Lanka — February, 2006 — Due to a combination of power shortages, severe budgetary problems, the global slowdown, continuing civil strife and the consequences of the devastating tsunami of December 2004, Sri Lanka often cannot meet the basic health and nutrition needs of its mostly rural population. Elsie Tama, IRD’s chief technical officer, visited Sri Lanka in late February 2006 to visit IRD projects, assess their progress and discuss future program possibilities with IRD staff and potential donors. She visited a number of schools and water projects in the Hambantota district in Sri Lanka.

I arrived at IRD headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka and met with a number of officials and donors interested in setting up new programs. We discussed new health proposals to combat disease, a variety of agricultural projects, and housing in post-conflict areas.

IRD is currently implementing the “Hambantota Educational Support Improvement Project”, or HESIP. This two-year US Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded program aims to improve the educational performance of school children through school feeding, infrastructure repair and prevention of parasitic infections in the Hambantota District.

Specific activities include:

- Distribution of milk five days a week to 12,000 children in 36 schools;
• - Repairs to 36 school buildings, including water and sanitation facilities; and
• - Screening of school children for intestinal parasites and provision of medicines to those infected.
• Many of the schools targeted for assistance through the HESIP program have toilets in poor condition or no water supply. Children bring water from home to drink. There are scarce resources for maintenance and the children work to keep the grounds clear and clean.
• Most of the children participating in HESIP are from subsistence farming families. They frequently miss several weeks of school during peak harvest periods. Many of the school children participating in HESIP are undernourished. IRD hopes the daily UHT milk will help them to concentrate better and will be an incentive to parents to leave their kids in school during harvest. Therefore I was anxious to observe how effective the IRD projects are in helping to alleviate the problems of these children and their families.
• IRD has done a remarkable job in the Hambantota district areas. Through our projects’ successes, we have touched and affected the lives of more than 5,000 school children in this suburb, and it breaks my heart to see that funding for this program is likely to come to an end this year.
• I visited five schools in three sections of Hambantota where IRD has completed projects. At this date we have constructed 18 schools with water sanitation facilities and seven more are in the works. Items from some of our completed projects include: urinals, toilets for boys and girls, water tank construction and supplied drinking water for the children, hygiene education, and milk distribution. I was struck by the realization that for the first time in the lives of these school children, they had sanitation amenities and clean drinking water available to them. And I was so pleased that the staff of the schools praised and applauded IRD for its good work.
• I also visited the Bundala and Kirinda water projects sites. Although these projects are often combined with school construction we do have a number of projects that provide new water towers, water pipe construction and water sanitation in various communities.