Unawatuna Montessori Pre-School

8 Aug 2005

Unawatuna Pre-school looks after children aged between 3-4 years old. Located on the main Galle Road in Unawatuna, the school is attended by 29 children from low income families. Each child attends free of charge and many of the children come from families affected by the Tsunami. The school provides each child with milk to drink or vegetable soup each day.

The building itself was flooded by the Tsunami. The buildings structure, including walls, roof, windows and doors are intact. The toilet block and shower are also in good condition. However, many of the facilities, for example, toys and furniture are now broken or washed away. The school presently has a tiny collection of toys that are in a good enough condition to use. This is barely big enough to spread round the class. The building is presently rented from a local landlord.

Each child attends from 8.30am – 12.00pm, Monday to Friday. The pre-school is staffed by one teacher (Samanthi) and a helper. Mothers also often help out. Music teaching is provided by a voluntary teacher, Sampath. His main role is to produce an annual music and dance performance on 27^th Dec. This is rehearsed by the children from August – December each year.

Government funding is not provided for this school. Save The Children are presently helping out with teacher training. However, no help has been provided by any other charities.

The pre-school has been Government registered since 1994. The school itself was started in 1990. Samanthi has been the main teacher for the last 10 years. She is planning to remain teaching at the school for many years to come.

Since Tsunami there is many more incidences of children arriving at the school in the morning, crying upon arrival and therefore taken home again. FOU has the opportunity to make the environment more welcoming and fun for the children, thus encouraging them to stay.

There are also several children that are much more withdrawn than the rest of the class. In particular, some of the children who do not attend school as often. Therefore, play with toys and instruments provided by FOU will help to increase interaction between these children and their peers and teachers.

Friends of Unawatuna agreed to fund some some new furniture and to repaint some of the existing furniture at the school along with supplying new toys and musical instruments. We also supplied the material for the uniforms you can see the children wearing Samanthi, the teacher, actually made them herself.