Reports from recent visitors to Ocean Stars projects

Christa Paxton is a trustee at Target Tuberculosis UK. She used to work for VSO as a fund-raiser and has many years of overseas experience, most recently, in Cambodia working on a Mental Health project.

OceanStars :: Thursday 21st March 2013 :: This Story

A report by Ranchan on Christa and Peter’s Visit

Christa and Peter arrived in Batticaloa on 12.02.2012 by local train. On the evening of the 12th I went to the hotel and met them. I thought they will stay in Batticaloa at least three days but they said they have to go back on 14th. Before I met them we had made arrangements to visit some nurseries and the Palmeirah class. Unfortunately the weather was very bad and we could not go anywhere because of floods. This is the 4th   recent flood in Batticaloa. Even local buses and people could not travel because of the bad condition of the roads. Christa and Peter were happy to visit our office.

When Christa and Peter visited our office we welcomed them as our traditional way. We talked about our projects and our work among the community. We invited one sponsor girl Kiruthika to talk about how she uses the sponsor money and how the sponsor money has helped her studies. We also invited two teachers Nilanthi and Girija to talk about the playgroups and what they do with the children. Christa and Peter also saw some of our Palmeirah and Painting class products. After about 3 hours discussion we had lunch in our office, in the evening they visited beach after that Christa and Peter went back to the hotel very happily.

A Report by Christa on her visit to Batticaloa and OSL

We had a good trip to visit the project but, as you will have heard from Ranchan, the flooding was so bad that both the nurseries and the Palmira were flooded and inaccessible when we were in Batticaloa. All the way on the train the flooding was getting worse and worse as we approached the coast and, in Batti itself, the roads to Avonlea and to the project office were only passable by tuck tuck. As a result we spent a really good morning at the office talking with Ranchan and the team (see photos), looking at photos and files and hearing all about the excellent work but were unable to visit places that Ranchan had planned for.

We would like to say how much we enjoyed visiting and meeting everyone and to say that every indication we had was of a well run and organised project doing a great job in an extremely difficult environmental and political arena. We took various gifts that we hope were useful - colouring books, pencils, bags with mirrors, toothbrushes and combs for the children or their families and we wrote to thank everyone and hope we didn't intrude too much on the work.