COVID-19 Sri Lanka Project #45908

Emergency Coronavirus Response

by Tea Leaf Trust

Project Report | Mar 4, 2021
A new year, a new start?

By Tim Pare | Co-Founder

The view from our TLV Maskeliya Centre

Hello!

We hope that you and your loved ones and wider communities are safe and well and beginning to see some small glimmer of light at the end of a very dark tunnel as vaccine roll outs begin to reduce numbers in many places.

In Sri Lanka, things are moving slowly for those within the tea estate communities as the impact for them has been overwhelmingly economic, increasing unemployment amongst our alumni by over 40% and causing already struggling families to drop below the poverty line and rack up additional debt to stay afloat. These are testing times, and whilst there are some positive things to report, we continue to be alert to those individuals and families who are most at risk.

The positive news is that students are back at our centres, although we are only able to to educate half of the students on any given day. The day on and day off rota slows the learning and our local team - who have been inspirational in their energy and commitment to provide the best quality education at all times - are modifying the year's curriculum to ensure students get to at least the baseline of what they need to learn.

Our three centres are over-subscribed and so we are working to meet the need of those we have not been able to offer places full-time. We plan to run part-time classes in basic English over weekends as soon as we are able.

Thank you for your support of our work and this emergency support. Our initial emergency response reached 13,665 people in 2020, and now we support particular cases that are critical with the donations that come in. With 80% on average of our cohorts living off less than $1, the need is too great for us to meet entirely, but our networks and needs assessment means that what we have goes to those who need it most.

Thank you again, and be safe and well,

Tim, Yas and all at Tea Leaf Trust

P.S. I wanted to attach a couple of more uplifting photos, a reminder of the beauty in the world. We hope to see you for a cup of tea in Sri Lanka when it is safe.

The walk by our TLV Maskeliya Centre

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Nov 9, 2020
Second Wave

By Tim Pare | Co-Founder

Hello!

Firstly, we send our good wishes to all of you whereever you are and hope that you and your loved ones are safe and well in this challenging year.

Many countries throughout the world have been facing a second wave of Covid-lockdowns and Sri Lanka is not exception. At the beginning of October, it is believed that a buyer from a garment factory returned from a work trip to India and was not picked up as positive. The person returned to work and within a week over a 1,000 cases were found within the factory. Before this transpired, the situation was made worse when all of the workers had a long weekend for the Poya Full Moon bank holiday and many returned to families around the island. After reporting only 3,369 cases and 13 deaths in a well-managed first wave, cases are now well in excess of 10,000.

For our communities, this means that our centres have been shut again after opening in August for around 6 weeks. There have been curfews around the island over the last month, although currently our areas have not been affected other than through all schools being closed.

We have made a decision to offer our 2020 students places again for the 2021 programme, as they have been able to have less than 4 months of lessons this year. Those who are not able to retake will gain a Basic English Certificate rather than our Main Diploma.

We are grateful for your support for this project - we were able to support over 11,000 individuals from 25 different areas. Any further donations will be used to support our communities as they recover from the economic hardship of losing their livelihoods for such an extended period of time - our employability centre has seen a 40% increase in alumni needing to find new work opportunities.

Thank you, and stay safe,

Tim and all at Tea Leaf Trust

Our school when it was open in August

Our school reopened in August

Our socially distanced classes

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Jul 17, 2020
Our amazing staff and alumni

By Tim Pare | Co-Founder

Dear All,

We hope that you are all safe and well and managing to adapt and thrive in these challenging times. We want to start by recognising the challenges that are facing us all and send our love to you, your families and your communities.

Thank you so much for donating to this appeal - this brief report is to update you about what we have done in terms of emergency response for those within the poorest tea estate communities within Sri Lanka.

Despite distributing the emergency support was challenging due to strict lockdown allowing on 6 hours every few days for any movement outside of the home - our staff and volunteers did a wonderful job getting supplies to those who needed them most. One lady we helped told us of a hidden community a further 30 minutes walk up the mountain - when our staff got there, they found real poverty and people who had only eaten a couple of biscuits in the last few days... these are the communities we are able to reach through our networks that government and less community-based NGOs miss.

During the last few months, since our appeal began across our various networks and channels, we have managed to raise Rs 4.7 million - about £20k. We are so grateful to everyone who helped us raise this sum and proud that around half of this money came from within our networks in Sri Lanka. From individuals, to current funders, to Rotary clubs to new organisations partnering with us, together we were able to respond quickly and in an informed manner to get the support to those who needed it most.

We have supported 2,247 families since to 26th March when our campaign began. That is over 11,000 people who received emergency food and soap as well as many receiving desperately needed medicine.

Thank you all so much, and again, wishing you good health and happiness, wherever you are.

With love from the Tea Leaf Trust Team

Links:

http://www.tealeaftrust.com

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