Speeches Shim
Students and teachers from Keselpotha Maha Vidyalaya in Uva Province joined representatives from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) yesterday to inaugurate a rainwater harvesting system at their school, providing clean drinking water year-round. Since 2012, USAID has partnered with local organizations to build more than 1,000 such systems in rural schools, and households in the drought and flood-prone districts of the North, East, and Uva Provinces.
The United States Embassy’s Dr. Andrew Sisson, USAID Mission Director, joined State Minister Hon. Sudharshini Fernandopulle and MEP leader Hon. Dinesh Gunawardena last week on January 5 to launch an approximately Rs. 150 million ($1 million) program to provide safe disaster-resilient drinking water to local communities in Sri Lanka. This program expands upon several previous USAID projects since 2012 that have provided sustainable access to drinking water to those areas in the South, East and North prone to droughts and floods.
USAID works with the Government and the people of Sri Lanka to help all Sri Lankans benefit from
nationwide progress.
In 2009, 20 years after fleeing the conflict between Sri Lanka and the separatist Tamil Tigers, 59-year-old Subramaniam Yogadas and his family returned to his coastal village in the Eastern district of Trincomalee. They had been refugees in India and the end of the conflict allowed them to rejoin their few surviving relatives.
Amaranthé Bay, a small luxury hotel poised between a lagoon and the sea, offered a bright new beginning for him and his family of six, which includes a disabled child. Yogadas was the hotel’s first employee. Amaranthé Bay’s goal was to develop the property to offer employment and training opportunities to the conflict-affected and impoverished local community. For the majority of the hotel’s 70 staff, including war widows who resettled after the conflict, Amaranthé Bay offered a second chance to live.
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