Tammennakulama village, in north central province of Sri Lanka used to have primary school. Children from Tammennakulama and Kelasiyambalawa attended this school. This areas was severely affected by war. During that time, the terrorists had set fire to this school and it was completely damaged. These two villages were abandoned for few years due to the terrorist activities. However, people have resettled in these areas around 2003. After the resettlement, the children of these villages went to the school in Periyakulama which is about 5km away. Parents had to take their children either by a push cycle or walk the whole distance up and down daily.

In January 2011, the O.I.C., Medawachchiya Police Station has obtained some timber and aluminum sheets from a vacated rehabilitation camp in Vavuniya and has constructed a temporary hall and re-opened the Thammennakulama school. Our organization was engaged in doing many rehabilitation projects in these villages in 2004 and we have seen the ruins of this school at that time. When we heard that this school has been reopened, we went to see the school recently. The Divisional Secretary of Medawachchiya also accompanied us. There are 29 students altogether and we donated books and stationery to all of them.

Description of the work

We found the timber used for this building to be inferior coconut rafters. The aluminum sheets get flown away even in a small wind. The teachers also mentioned that during rain, they cannot teach due the heavy noise from the roof. The condition of the roof in this building is so bad and it is not safe to keep the children under this roof.
Karuna Trust is planning to do the following reconstruction work for this building to accommodate the needs:

• Re-construct a permanent roof for this building. Install a permanent steel roof structure and replace aluminum sheets with corrugated asbestos sheets.
• Make necessary structural changes to the building to support a permanent roof. The pillars on one side of this building are not in parallel with the opposite side pillars. We have to demolish the pillars on one side and rebuild five pillars in parallel to the pillars on other side in order to install the steel trusses.
• Construct wall partitions between class rooms
• Wire mesh the outside walls.

Even though we initiated this project with the above improvements in mind, there was a strong request by the community for a new building that could accomodate ~ 4 classes. Considering this appeal we decided to construct a brand new building at an estimated cost of LKR 1,200,00.   

Fund Raising

Through fund raising efforts, Karuna Trust was able to raise LKR 742,050 by end of June 2012, with kind contributions from donors across the globe. The balance funds, which is estimated to be around LKR 458,000 will be sourced from Karuna Trust. On behalf of Tammennakulama village community, we wish to express our heartfelt gratitude to all those who contributed to this project.

A Special fund raising event was organized by the Sri Lanka United National Association of Canada (SLUNA), through which they were able to raise a total of LKR 518,000. We wish to convey our special thanks to Mr. Mahinda Gunasekera, Honorary President of SLUNA for organizing this event, and all those who participated and contributed towards this worthy cause in various ways. We also wish to thank Mrs Janaki Yassanayake from Arizona, USA for the tremendous support given to raise funds for this project.  Full details of the funding for this project including donor list can be found in the project report.

Project Status: Completed

Construction was started on June 29th, 2012 with a simple ceremony where Mr.Karunaratne layed the foundation stone for the new school building with participation of teachers, students, parents and the Medavachchiya Divisional Secretary Mr. Prasanna Madanayake.

Construction work was completed in early January 2013. Tammennakulama school building was handed over to the community on the 29th of January 2013. Some pictures.