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“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 5

For the future of children

Nilani is a pioneering social worker in Sri Lanka. Born and raised in a poor family, she received a scholarship and studied at Sri Lanka’s first social welfare school. After teaching at her school and other educational institutions, she worked with Save the Children, where she interacted with a wide range of people.

On December 26, 2004, an event occurred that would dramatically change her life. While on a business trip with her family to the coastal region, she encountered the massive tsunami caused by the Sumatra earthquake, losing her five-year-old son. Despite her profound grief, she established the Siddhartha Child Development Foundation (SCDF). This initiative, which aims to provide children with a safe environment where they can fully develop their potential and live joyfully, has now reached its 20th anniversary.

There is a village in Gangeyaya, Hasalaka, located in Central province, that Nilani now passionately visits every three months. To reach this village, she must take a bus and then an auto rickshaw, followed by a 5-kilometer walk. The total journey takes eight hours one way. The poor access to this village, located beyond a road so bad that auto rickshaw drivers refuse to go there, greatly hampers the villagers’ lives.

In most households, mothers work in the Middle East, while fathers and older brothers work in the military. Left behind, grandparents alone cannot adequately educate the children, and many drop out before reaching high school.
One of the few jobs available in the village is brick-making, but the wages paid are meager. Furthermore, contractors will sell contracts to use their land for making bricks, resulting in the loss of fertile topsoil. By the time the brick-makers are finished stripping the earth for materials, the soil has died, and become impossible to start a farm.

Farmers also face dangers caused by elephants. Elephants living in the jungle adjacent to the village often venture into residential areas in search of fruit and water. If they discover rice inside a house, they destroy it, and in severe cases, family members may lose their lives.

One of the reasons Nilani continues to be involved with this village is the presence of Chandra, an SCDF volunteer worker whom she cares for like her own daughter. Her family is the poorest in the village, but she has a beautiful heart and works tirelessly for others, putting her own problems aside.

In July, Nilani visited that village again and stayed for a week, conducting programs for children and elderly people and visiting their houses. When she comes, many villagers gather to talk to her. When Nilani arrives, one girl runs up to her to embrace. This young girl was born with developmental disabilities, but thanks to the intervention of Chandra, she can now read, write, and speak well. She proudly shows off her pumpkin garden at home to Nilani, thriving despite the smaller rainfall this year. Since graduating from ARI in 2018, Nilani has been actively incorporating agriculture into her children’s programs, and in this village, she is going to have a project with the children in September to make compost and grow seedlings for the October rainy season, and will ask children to make their own plans for individual kitchen gardens.

Nilani’s latest pleasure is growing plants in her home on the second floor. She started it as a way to teach her children how to make the most of limited space, but it has grown into a passion and reminds her of simple joys and sorrows she had as a child, such as when a plant gets sick. When Nilani returns home after a day of her important work, she feels tired, but with an energized mind.

I asked Nilani what food means to her. She replied with a Buddhist teaching, “the most important thing for all living things.” She always speaks to her children in the words of Chief Seattle: “If this earth, which has been handed down from our ancestors, is damaged, human beings cannot survive. So we must take care of our own lands.”

Inteviewed & Written by Makiko Abe


Click here to read the series of articles

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 1

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 2

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 3

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 4

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates -spin off-

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 5 ← Now, you’re here.

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates -Spin off-

This August 12, one of our graduates deeply involved in global peace-building visited the campus to speak about this important work.

Thomas Mathew, a graduate from India, travels to Japan almost every year to attend the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6th and the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 9th. Peace activities are a critical pillar of his work. His passionate commitment to peace activities was sparked by his training at ARI in 1988. During the Western Japan Study Tour, he visited Hiroshima, where he encountered the history of the atomic bomb and listened to a “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors, which sparked his concern about India’s nuclear possession. “Nuclear weapons are different from other weapons. They have the power to totally eliminate humanity and nature.”

After returning to India, he dreamed of creating dialogue between hibakusha and his region, so that his people could hear their stories. After a short time, he successfully brought several hibakusha to his community in1990 August and it is still going on. Since then, he has also worked to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons, including photo exhibitions, seminars and producing a documentary about the serious impact on the environment and humans after India’s nuclear tests in May 1998.

During his session at ARI, he described the work he does now: “Social services in the community you belong to and where you were raised is very important. However, no matter how much economic growth there is, it will not last long without peace. That is why doing both social services and peace activities is my mission.”

When one participant asked if he could truly imagine a world without nuclear weapons, he replied, “This is my dream. Dreams need to be fulfilled. We work. Educate the younger generation. Listen to hibakushas. One day, that day will come true.”

After his lecture, the author asked him to write his answer to “what does food mean to you?” on the Peace from Food campaign sticker.
His answer was, “Food is peace.”

Read more about Thomas Mathew’s work in volume 2 of our series, Peace from Food, in the article series linked below.

Peace from Food Donation Campaign
August 1, 2025 (Friday) – September 20, 2025 (Saturday)
▶ Visit our campaign website: ari.ac.jp/donate/peace2025

Written by Yuko Emura


Click here to read the series of articles

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 1

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 2

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 3

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 4

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates -spin off- ← Now, you’re here.

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 5

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 4

Return of the Forest

When Veny and Kengo’s time at ARI came to an end in 2012, they had no plans to make a food forest in the tropics of North Sumatra, Indonesia—Veny’s hometown. Both of them are ARI graduates (2005 and 2012), having met when Veny was a training assistant in 2012.  Kengo, originally from Japan, had never been to Indonesia before, and the term ‘food forest’ was likewise new to both of them. At ARI, Kengo learned the basics of organic farming and was especially attracted to permaculture, with its principles of a keeping a healthy ecosystem, and farming without destroying nature. However, applying this knowledge in a new country and climate he was unfamiliar with posed a huge challenge. Kengo and Veny married in Japan, soon after ARI training, and then settled in Indonesia.  It was there they began to learn more intensely about the concept of a food forest.

In 2015, Veny and Kengo bought their first bit of land, but they didn’t start the food forest at that time. Instead, they planned to grow coffee, in order to make a living. They used what they learned at ARI by planting nitrogen fixing trees to make their soil more hospitable. One year later, Kengo felt there was something wrong with his post-ARI plan. He looked out over his land and saw only coffee beans, nothing else. The image of having only one crop made him realize that he needed to expand the farm—this is where the story of their food forest truly begins. 

What started as a personal project just to survive is now over halfway complete—Veny and Kengo are over 50% self-sufficient. They never buy their vegetables from the market. Instead, they harvest what they need from their forest and sell the rest. They grow all kinds of fruits too—guava, jackfruit, avocado, mulberry and many more. Even though the forest has been growing for 10 years, not everything has matured yet, and Veny and Kengo remind us that a project like this takes time and a tremendous amount of patience.

Now, after more than ten years of developing their food forest, they are proud to be able to show off their hard work to the community. Their neighbors grow their own rice and some vegetables, but their fields are not self-sustaining. They still need to go to the market for basic food staples. Veny and Kengo encourage others to become self-sustaining by giving tours of their own food forest. Last year, they received a grant from AFARI, allowing them to invite 50 local farmers in North Sumatra to visit their food forest and teach them how to begin their own projects. Now they are not the only ones in their community growing a food forest—many of these farmers have since embarked on their own journey of becoming self-sufficient.

The advice they give to others is simple but powerful: be patient. Results take time, and people may doubt you at first. But stay hopeful. When asked about their interpretation of the theme of Peace from Food, Kengo insisted that the peace reflected in this phrase begins with one’s own respect for earth’s resources, and that with a “peaceful relationship with nature, we can start to build a system for long-lasting abundance.” Veny was quick to add her own two cents, that this theme is personal to her. By harvesting fruits and vegetables that she grew herself, and then preparing them for the table, she finds a sense of care and connection rooted in nourishing others.  She “finds something peaceful in [her] heart.”

Inteviewed & Written by Marielle Randall (Wellesley College Intern)



Click here to read the series of articles

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 1

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 2

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 3

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 4 ← Now, you’re here.

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates -spin off-

“Peace from Food” from the tables of ARI’s graduates Vol. 5