Charity Partnerships
Sunny-sid3 Up
Glasgow based charity Sunny-sid3 up team has partnered with Ocean Stars Trust UK and Ocean Stars Lanka to empower children through education and relieve poverty in rural communities of Eastern Sri Lanka. Our first collaborative project was the delivery of 100 Food Parcels. These were delivered to 100 Ocean Stars families living under the poverty line. We look forward to working with Sunny- sid3-up and making an impact on the families of rural eastern Sri Lanka. Sunny-sid3 up also donated a bonus to each of our preschool teachers in January. On receiving the unexpected bonus the teachers expressed their heartfelt gratitude to Sunny- sid3-up for making such a huge difference to their monthly income.
Sunny-sid3up was founded by Christopher Feeney, an ice-cream van driver from Pollok, Glasgow. Through his job, Chris discovered his true passion; helping those less fortunate than himself. After the 2004 Asian tsunami, Chris travelled to India for his first international aid project. With other volunteers, he helped rebuild an entire fishing village that was completely destroyed by the tsunami. Inspired by his first large project, Chris went on to complete even more work in Sri Lanka, New Orleans, Mexico and Haiti.
While Chris found all his trips extremely rewarding, he regularly expressed concern at the unfair and fragmented distribution of aid he witnessed. For this reason he decided to create his own registered charity and Sunny-Sid3 Up was born.
Under his charity, Chris managed to complete more projects abroad before he took unwell and passed away en route home from a trip to Sri Lanka.
Some years on from Chris's unfortunate passing, his charity lives on with only one small change; its location. Thanks to help from aid worker Paul Gill, Sunny-sid3up managed to finish off the projects it started abroad and is now run by Chris's family and friends, operating closer to home in Glasgow, Scotland.
In memory of Chris Feeney
I KNEW THIS IS WHAT I WANTED TO DO...HELP PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES OUT OF THE POVERTY TRAP
CHRIS FEENEY, CHARITY FOUNDER
Durham University Charities Kommittee. (DUCK)
Ocean Stars are happy to announce their partnership with Durham University Charities Kommittee. (DUCK). In July a group of students will be travelling to Sri Lanka and volunteering in our preschools for 3 weeks.
Ella Macmillan, Durham University Expedition Coordinator explains about the work of DUCK:
"As Expeditions Officer I'll be responsible for all of our expeditions this year, which I'm extremely excited about! Our expeditions are unique - they're the only student-run volunteering trips in the country, and I'm very proud to be able to manage them next year. It's early days at the moment, but I'm beginning to plan our trips for the summer of 2019. We choose our charities very carefully - we want to combine providing our students a once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunity with engaging in meaningful, sustainable volunteering programmes.
I've been looking through the Ocean Stars website and absolutely love it - the work that Ocean Stars does seems incredibly valuable in helping change the lives of children affected by poverty and civil war. As such, I would be thrilled to add your charity in Sri Lanka to the list of destinations we offer
We are so excited to add Sri Lanka to our list of destinations and support a highly deserving charity like Ocean Stars Trust that provides a real benefit to the local communities. We hope that this is the start of a long partnership!"
17A
We are a group of medical and biomedical science students at universities in London and we appreciate that growing up in London, we are often blinded by the hardships that others face in this world. We often take what we have for granted. So, when uni got a bit tough for us and we started complaining we took a step back. We realised we've actually got an opportunity to even get as far as studying a degree. Whereas there are kids out there who don't even know if they would still be in school tomorrow or who can only dream of having an education. We know education is a gift that no one should take away from you, not even poverty. Our aim is to be able to give the opportunity we received so easily to another child. A child who dreams for a better education, a better future and a better life. We hope we can help make those dreams come true.
As a group we call ourselves 17A to symbolise where this idea started. For us, the idea to be able to help improve someone's future originated in our house. So it serves as a constant reminder of our humble beginnings.
Teach Sri Lanka
Ocean Stars Trust is proud to announce the Partnership between OST and Teach Sri Lanka. Based in the UK TSL have a very similar vision to us, and OST have partnered them with Naripulthotam Preschool in Eastern Sri Lanka.
Teach Sri Lanka has sent this message:
"We are extremely delighted to officially announce that we will be taking care of an underprivileged school in Naripulthotam, Batticaloa to provide free education to 35+ children between the ages of 4-6 in Partnership with Ocean Stars (OST). OST are a UK based charity which primarily focuses on preschool education programme in Sri Lanka. They currently manage over 20 schools across the country.
This has been a dream we have actively pursued since the inception of Teach Sri Lanka. Now we have the right infrastructure in place to make it a reality. Hence a momentous milestone in our Journey so far and takes us a step closer to our mission statement. This is going to be an extremely challenging and rewarding project, which we are very much looking forward to supporting."
Teach Sri Lanka has continued to work with Ocean Stars UK and support Naripulthotam preschool . They provide uniforms for the students and teachers as well as pay the wages of the teachers. The preschool community of Naripulthotam are very grateful to Teach Sri Lanka for their support. Dimithri from Teach Sri Lanka visited the preschool in January and found thee experience very humbling and uplifting. The TSL team also met up with the Ocean Stars UK team in June to talk about our work together.