Educational scholarships

Educational scholarships to 54 children

In 2009, SUMAGA organisation and a group of Norwegians who had various affiliations to Sri Lanka initiated a collaborative project with the "Chief Ministers Fund". The objective was to support fifty selected families in Ududumbara, a rural area in Sri Lanka. In this project, we made a monthly payment of SLR. 750.00 for each child and facilitated self-employment opportunities for their parents. Throughout the project, we followed up all the families in a systematic manner.

We planned to fund this program by recruiting donors who were willing to make NOK 100 monthly contributions. The recruitment process was driven mainly by the personal networks of SUMAGA members (e.g., family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues). In addition, we organised various fund-raising events like Sri Lankan evenings, cultural and musical shows, bazaar, and yard sales.

"The Chief Ministers Fund" appointed a team of skilled workers from all levels in the society to handle the program. The large majority of these personals supported the project on a voluntary basis, while a few had tasks as a part of their ordinary jobs.

The pilot program started on 14th July 2009. Fifty-four underprivileged children from two villages in Ududumbara in Central province were granted monthly scholarships. The scholarship money could be utilized for educational purposes only. For example, this money could only be used to buy school books, uniforms, stationary and pay tuition fees. This amount was raised to Rs 1000.- in 2011.

After selecting these fifty-four children, we deposited funds for six months in relevant Samurdhi Banks under their names. The Samurdhi Bank is a Rural Bank Established under Government Regulations and monitored by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Since then we have collected funds in Norway and transferred them to children through our partners in Sri Lanka.

We provided self-employment opportunities to parents of these selected children on a case-by-case basis. For instance, one family received a cow with two calves from us. A veterinary doctor was supposed to follow up the cows and assist the family to succeed on their small scale dairy production. Few other families received help from us to start carpentry workshops. Moreover, in 2010, we started a sewing centre that provided training programs to 30 women and men from the village.

Selection criteria

The criteria for selecting beneficiary children is based on the already existing foster care program of "Chief Ministers Fund". THis helped use to identify the right group of children for the pilot project. The characteristics of the project “offering a total solution for self-development”, demands that children should be selected under the given criteria within a certain geographical area. Since it is not difficult to find hundreds of children from rural underprivilege villages, the project decided to select two villages. The selection of children will be done by the appointed committee in cooperation with relevant government officials.

Foster parent program of the Chief Minister`s Fund (CMF)

The CMF of the Central Province has launched this program to help the children who face difficulties in continuing their education due to poverty and other related problems in the family. People, who are willing to help these children, have the opportunity to identify children with such difficulties and support these children, through CMF as foster parents.

Objectives of the program:

To help the children who are faced with poverty as a barrier in their education
To help for survival and education needs of the children who have lost their parents or are forced to live separately from them due to various problem.
To discourage admission of children to children`s Homes by the parents as an easy way out of poor economy and help those children to grow up within their family.
To ensure the right of education to each and every child in the province.

Selection of Beneficiary Children in CMF

School children who have lost one or both parents and are without a permanent income.
School children not living under parental care (even though the parents are living) but with other care givers, and have problems in continuing their education.
Children living with parents, but find it difficult to continue their education as the parents do not have a permanent income.
Children of families with permanent income, but having financial difficulties for their education as the number of children the family are many.
Children not falling into above categories but show outstanding performance in their education and also need external support to shine their skills.

The problems of children in province are often reported to the Probation Officers, the Child Rights Promotion Officers (CRPOs), and the Teachers and also in the media. Most requests of such children (especially for financial assistance) are not met as the authorities concerned have no allocations for such assistance in their budgets. Under the proposed program the Department of Probation and Childcare Services of the Central Province will keep records of such children and make recommendation to the Chief Ministers Fund on their eligibility for assistance from the Fund. A committee of the Fund will finally decide on the eligibility of beneficiaries.

Reporting and evaluation

The Grama Seva Officer (head of the village) and the heads of the relevant schools monitor the spending of the funds to ensure the funds are used preciously for the said educational purposes, and give a feed back to the next level of officers who after verifying and clarifying submit their findings to the top.

The Probation Officers, CRPOs and Principals of the relevant schools will monitor the performance of the beneficiary children and report to the Chief Ministers Fund on a quarterly basis through the Department of Probation and Childcare Services. The reports reaching the Chief Ministers will be sent to the Norwegian partners for control & evaluation.

Earlier experience from the similar projects shows a tremendous improvement in recipients’ education, behavior patterns, and attitudes towards their friends, teachers and parents. These improvements shows a very positive attitude towards life rather than the negative one which existed before. Our intension is to harvest similar results and every possible effort will be paid to approach the targets.

The Chief Minister’s Fund

The Chief Minister’s Fund (CMF) of the Central Province, Sri Lanka was established on 5 th April 2006 in Kandy, by a group of philanthropists and public officials led by the Chief Minster of the Central Province Mr. Sarath Ekanayake. Mr. Sarath Ekanayaka has studied & worked in Norway for a period of 8 years, and has a broad knowledge about Norway, Norwegian society & specially about the Norwegian way of thinking. He knows the generosity of Norwegians as well as their demands of that contribution must be reached to the recipients without any reduction & with least of administrative coasts, and also that contributor’s will to have a certain “ownership” and nearness to the recipients.

The Fund was established with the noble intension of creating new ways of helping various sections of people in the Central Province who undergo untold hardships as a result of not being able to provide for themselves due to abject poverty, serious illnesses, and deprivation of education opportunities etc, to make their living standards better. The Fund reinforces the Chief Minister’s endeavor to ‘add virtuous things to history’.