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

“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.”