Anuladevi Balika Vidyalaya School

22 Mar 2005

The Anuladevi Balika Vidyalaya school is located on the boundary of Unawatuna and Galle. A girls school of approximately 1500 pupils, it is positioned about 1 kilometre inland from the Galle/Matara road. Despite this it was reached by the wave on Boxing Day, resulting in the boundary wall being destroyed and the ground floors of the buildings being flooded and filled with mud and debris.

Parents and staff managed to return the school to a usable state very quickly, despite finding several hand grenades amongst the debris, washed in from the nearby naval base.

Matt visited the school in the week after the Tsunami and on behalf of FoU provided some immediate help in the form of several thousand pens and pencils, and approx. 500 new text books which had been lost. We were grateful to have the opportunity to hand some of these books out to pupils at the end of January.      

This left the boundary wall as the main remaining problem at the school. Although the adjacent road is not too busy, there was concern that the children were able to wander away from the school, and of course others were able to wander in. A very temporary wooden fence had been erected which required replacing with something more permanent. Matt agreed with the headmistress Mrs B.P.Irangani de Silva that FoU would fund the rebuilding of the 100m+ wall in conjunction with a local businessman who provided hardcore, and the parents who provided their time and labour.

The work progressed slowly but steadily, with Sam providing materials on a regular basis as they were required, mainly to minimise the risk of theft of stockpiled cement. sand etc. We even managed with the help of a UK builder staying in Unawatuna to tactfully (we hope) persuade the building contractors to improve the physical strength of the wall by applying some basic European building standards!

The wall was completed in mid-February.

In addition, 250 new pupils, including many from the Unawatuna beach school which was totally destroyed, had no school uniform or shoes. Armed with a list of required sizes, 250 pairs of school shoes were purchased in January by Matt, Jake, Jamie and Sam from the local factory.

We have discussed with Mrs de Silva the possibility of UK school children being able to write to and establish friendships with the children of Unawatuna. Details have been swapped and hopefully longer term relationships will develop.

We are visiting the school on a regular basis (Sam's daughter is a pupil there) to keep in touch. As with most other schools in the Unawatuna area, they are now receiving aid from a number of different international sources and school life is returning quickly to some form of normality.

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