During our leadership week two years ago, we agreed on a vision for 2020 and decided to review it after two years. This June, the time had come to gather again. So we travelled to Sri Lanka where we operate since the opening of our first Sri Lankan learning center in June 2016. Besides revising our goals and vision, we also wanted to visit our learning centers in Sri Lanka – Bandarawela and Kekirawa.
Impact Assessment: is our impact chain still valid?
This will mean that the Community Heroes will also need support by our Global Support Team to communicate the positive aspects of the new learning approach and to work on ways to implement it.
After lunch, we got on a big pink bus and rode the 160km to our second learning center established in Sri Lanka: Kekirawa Learning Center. Situated in one of the hottest regions of Sri Lanka, Kekirawa Learning Center opened this March. Community Hero Sampath Senawatte welcomed us to the newly renovated building. Besides a small library with a meeting corner, the house hosts an IT room and two classrooms. Despite having opened only three months ago, Sampath has a already executed a row of classes and has connected students from Kekirawa community with local businesses. This shows his vision: to enable people to help themselves by providing practical knowledge and business skills.
A first result is a mushroom-growing business. Kenti, a woman from the community and one of the local participants in our Capability Program, presented the business approach: woman from the community grow mushrooms and sell them to restaurants and markets under the same branding. It was very interesting to talk to her and Sampath and to learn more about their very clear business ideas.
To explore the region of Kekirawa Learning Center, we visited the archeological site of Sigiriya. At 35° Celsius, we enjoyed the vast palace complex in the middle of the jungle built around an impressive rock with world-famous rock graffiti. For some of us it was challenging to follow the guide’s explanations on details of Sri Lankan history but we were grateful to be introduced to the great deeds of King Carshipper – a misunderstanding that led to many laughs and us grow together even tighter as a team. After a refreshing swim in our hotel’s pool, we gathered for another savoury dinner with many chats about our vision, challenges and personal anecdotes.
Bus rides are good for working!
Wednesday was filled with a hot yet impressive visit to the biggest archeological site of Sri Lanka, Anuradhapura. To become active and experience Sri Lanka’s buzzling streets, the entire team rode there by bike. Going left on the road was a major challenge for all of us but thanks to the patience of the Sri Lankan car and tuk-tuk drivers, we always ended up on the right side on the street. After meeting one of the applicants for our next learning center during lunch, we got on the bus to go to Bandarawela in the Eastern Hill Country of Sri Lanka. It was a very long ride taking us from the hot North and its swamp lands to the much cooler and greener highlands.
Student-centered teaching at its best: Bandarawela Learning Center
Thursday was the day of reuniting with Sujitha Miranda, Community Hero in Bandarawela. Together with the participants of our 2nd Global Social Entrepreneurship program, she opened her learning center exactly one year ago. Sujitha and her assistant and teacher Sateesh welcomed us to a very clean and neat building in the center of the town. The learning center’s rooms are carefully equipped and decorated and provide a welcoming and positive learning atmosphere.
To improve the career chances of her students, she has created a unique class offering, the “Find yourself” course. Find out more about it in this blog article as it is a big step forward in reaching our vision 2020.
Intense workshops: Governance, transfer projects and recruiting processes
Friday was very intense as we worked the entire day on important topics like governance, aspects of the Capability Program and recruiting processes. After Rasheed, our foundation board’s president, had joined us and the BOOKBRIDGE foundation board was complete, Barbara worked us through the important topic governance and the relations between the legal entities of BOOKBRIDGE. As professional attorney, Barbara guided us to a better definition of the relations between BOOKBRIDGE Foundation, BOOKBRIDGE GmbH and the Country organizations. Though some team members had stomach problems we managed to take important steps on this journey.
After a heavy thunderstorm and a late lunch break, the foundation board gathered for the first time in person with all members – not an easy thing with Maledives, Swiss and Germans! The country management teams together with Monika and Jella discussed how the processes of recruiting our Community Heroes can be improved. The emotional discussions showed clearly that this was a very important topic that had long be underestimated.
This social enterprise thing by Eranda Ginige is another example of the various NGOs that proliferate
in order to scam some money from western countries, dine and fete them when they come to SL, so that they too can be dined and feted when they get to go abroad, in the name of sustainable development, environment, rural upliftment etc., etc.. Note that there is not one scientist, engineer, or qualified agriculturalist, biologist, environmental scientist etc. , among this group. Today we are living in a tightly technological world (but technologically ignorant people who do not cooperate with science but try to make their own crude “technology” which they think is sustainable), with rapidly increasing population which has encroached on the biospace available to all other species, and hence killing biodiversity, reducing the availability of land, water etc.
But these people are trying to plant the “organic farming” model borrowed from the elitist west which leads to extreme demands on water, land and also creates pollution because the toxins absorbed and accumulated by the plants are recycled via composting and thus aggravating environmental problems. These groups are going on naive “traditional knowledge” valorization which will lead to large scale famines in developing countries.
Thank you for your comment, bodhi Dhanapala. I am glad you are upset by the Social Enterprise “thing” which is developing so rapidly in Sri Lanka. As I have worked for a long time in the NGO sector I do agree with you that most NGOs are highly inefficient in how they spend their grants. However, BOOKBRIDGE and Social Enterprise Lanka are “Social Enterprises” which means that they aim at making people financially independent by empowering them. I invite you to read my Theory of Social Enterprise to understand the difference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/theory-social-enterprise-eranda-ginige?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_post_details%3BcdAmBv15Qs2MxGgKrNJH0A%3D%3D
I disagree with you that “toxins are recycled through composting”. The opposite is the case: organic farming doesn´t use toxins or uses them to a much lesser degree than in “normal” farming. So there are no toxins to recycle. Also, farm cattle alone consumes a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people, more than the entire human population on Earth. I invite you to read more about organic farming to discover its benefits for mankind and nature.
I invite you to contact me directly if you have further questions. I would be glad to discuss them with you. Have a nice day.
Eranda