Ocean Stars Lanka End of Year Programme Report

Our annual end of year programme was held on Friday 14th December 2013. The guests started to arrive at 9.00 am and were welcomed with traditional garlands by the children.

OceanStars :: Monday 20th January 2014 :: This Story

2013 Year End Celebration Ocean Stars Lanka Supported by Ocean Stars Trust UK

Firstly I would like to thank God that we were able to bring joy and laughter to the faces of more than 600 children.

Our Year End programme started at 9 am with a traditional Garland  welcome from the   diverse Sri Lankan community of Tamil, Sinhala, Muslim and Burger communities  (for this event children were dressed up with different community dresses). After that we had the lighting of the traditional oil lamp and this was followed by 2 minutes silent prayer.

Following our arrangements every aspect of the programme went well. The teachers were ready with their performances. The guests were very surprised about the arrangements and the high standard of the children’s performances. We were very fortunate as the Prema group gave us free noodles for our children and this meant that the children could stay till the end of the programme.

We had two guest speakers both of whom were very pleased about this event. One of them said he would never have expected remote village children to do this kind of fantastic performance. Each of the playgroups supported by Ocean Stars Lanka gave one cultural performance.  We had Kummi, Koladdam, Karakam, flower dance, ribbon dance, western dance and Baratha naddiyam. The whole programme was a mixture of Tamil cultural dances. Two performances were given by Puliyadimunai School.

Mr.M.David, who is in charge of Education for the Eastern District, participated in this programme and he was very happy about the whole event. We got help from 3 Vincent School girls, and Mrs.K.Bavan helped us to distribute the snacks for the guests. Beaulah was the announcer; all other team members took different responsibilities. It was a true Ocean Stars family event.

The parents and children were very happy because they all received a school uniform for their New School Year which in Sri Lanka starts in January. Children from all our sponsorship programmes also attended this event. In reality more than 1000 people attended our Year End Celebration.

Also we would like to thank Dilanee and the UK Trustees as without your support we could not stage this event and achieve this kind of victory.  Many thanks to you all.