As a welfare organisation, we, Akuratatha, believe that only though education we can change the future of our younger generation. Education is one of the most powerful weapons in fighting poverty in such rural surroundings.  So we, teachers in government schools, stabilized this organization to fulfill these needs.

Where we are:

Akuressa is a rural village in Matara district. Here, we can experience traditional village life although it is close to tourism area. Lot of them are tea pluckers and paddy cultivators. They are Sinhala Buddhists. We are happy to say that they lead happy family life although they are not so rich. We have stabilized our organization in this village to empower younger generation with education.

Our target group is school children and school leavers. Their social and soft skills abilities are improving day by day, but is still quite weak, because the education system doesn't do anything to put this forward. But we believe that this is utterly important for them to master such be able to work together and support each others in their personal projects to have a chance to achieve their dreams.

From a politic point of view, the children are undergoing lot of hardships because of the poverty. Sri Lanka faces an unsustainable debt and severe balance of payments crisis, which is having a negative impact on growth and poverty, especially in rural areas. According to the latest South Asia Economic Focus and the Sri Lanka Development Update, Sri Lanka's real GDP is expected to fall by 9.2 percent in 2023 and a further 4.2 percent in 2024. so lot of people do not have even basic needs. And we can feel this very much in school, where we have noticed a daily increasing dropout rate among students. Lot of school children come to school without having breakfast, and during the interval they have only rice with chilly.

Furthermore, we started a collaboration work with the students studying International Cooperation in the university of Leuven, in Belgium. Every year this university sends two or three students to fulfill their internship and thesis for six month. And children can learn a lot from this experience as well, as they see what is possible for them to achieve with a good English level.

Now we are proud to host our own local volunteer team with very good English speaking ability. Some are school teachers, some others are teenagers with limited experience, but they all have in common that they are willing to teach the children extra skills like drawing or dancing.

You will work together with the students to develop long-term projects, and conducting them from the proposal until the achievement. You will also get the chance to spend time and discuss this with them to better understand their needs and wishes, and thus fit the "business plan" as close as possible from these.

Some projects which might be useful here are:

• Making a beautiful garden with children: designing of the garden, management of a budget to build and taking care of it, elaboration of a timeline to respect etc.
  
• Creation of a travel book: visit beautiful places with the children, and create together a well-furnished explanatory leaflet for the local people as well as for the tourists, with the ambition of being locally published. 
• Organisation of a food fair: as a first step, learning how to cook, how to manage a budget for the groceries, and as a second step, find a place for the fair, cook everything, decorate it, advertising it, and manage it on the day.   

Of course, we are open to imagine other projects with other skills that you, as a volunteer, might be able to bring, or that you might find useful for our students.

Also, keep in mind you are working with locals at any time, so you will not be on your own, and you can always get their help if you need.

Last thing, in our culture, teaching is a noble and respectable profession. Volunteers are thus expected to wear suitable attire, and refrain from smoking, drinking alcohol and take drugs, as you are considered as a model of our students. For example, students will worship you before and after the class. But if you want those you can go to touristic area (beach) within one hour.