The year 1933 saw my birth into a very remote village in the Galle District. At the time, the Divisional Revenue Officer’s Division of Hiniduma was one of the most underdeveloped areas in the Southern Province. Much of the land was owned by a few families, which left the majority in poor circumstances and completely dependent on the paltry daily wages given by the landlords. As a child, I saw how my parents – especially my mother – helped the poor people in our village. That impressed upon me the importance of helping the needy.

I began my social activities early on in life as a student, but these had to be put on hold when I entered the workforce, because I was fully occupied with trade union activities. However, once I set up my own business in 1963, I was able to step back into my social work. While I was an active member of many reputed social organisations, their projects were unable to satisfy my deep desire to help those in need. This led me to give up those organisations and focus instead on how I could help the underprivileged.

I was fortunate in that by 2003, my wife and I had completed our duties to our parents, siblings, and children. We had no cause for concern because our children were looking after us very well. Given these circumstances, I decided to give everything I had to my children and devote the rest of my life to uplift the lives of the underprivileged.

On my 70th birthday on March 12, 2003, I followed through with this intention and founded the Karuna Trust with a capital of Rupees one million. The only request I made from my children was that they donate a certain portion of the net profit of our family business to the Trust Fund. I am happy to say that they do so, even beyond my request. In addition to this, the money I inherited from our family business was added to the capital as well, as is the monthly salary that I draw as the honorary Chairman of the family business.

I am proud of the Rs. 102 Mn. the Trust Fund has accumulated over the past 17 years, as it is solely the contributions made by our family business. The interest generated from this sum is utilised for our social activities. Also, 25% of our income arrives in the form of donations. We keep our administrative expenses below 2.5%, enlist only volunteers from the family business staff. and receive our printing and stationery free of charge from our company. These measures have left us with greater leeway to focus on our social work.

These activities were begun in 2003, when we built a house for a homeless family in Attanagalla. From then onwards, we engaged in educational and community development work until 2015. In mid-2015, we started working jointly with the Vision 2020 Secretariat under the Ministry of Health. In early 2017, the activities of Vision 2020 became inactive, but because eye care service is such a worthy project, we began our own initiative in mid-2017.

Over the next two years, this eye care initiative was prioritised by the Trust Fund so much so that we decided to completely shift the Trust’s focus onto eye care services from 2020 onwards. We felt that eye care required greater attention as there was a dearth in charities that focused on eye care, especially when it came to funding cataract surgeries.

These changes in direction has brought the Karuna Trust to its current position, where our aim is to eliminate avoidable blindness through our eye care initiatives. We have decided to prioritise cataract surgeries for two main reasons – they incur very high costs and not many charities fund these surgeries. We felt that the Trust could step into this gap and begin a truly visionary project that would have almost immediate effects on its target population. I am pleased to say that many a needy person has received sight through the Trust’s work. In addition to eye surgeries, we also focus on providing high quality, low production cost prescription glasses to those in need of vision correction. This project has yielded wonderful results as well. Overall, I am confident of the shift that we are taking as an organisation and look forward to this new vision for our future.

It is truly a pleasure to be instrumental in providing sight to the blind and it is also a great merit. We count it an enormous privilege to be part of the Karuna Trust and will continue to make a difference in the lives of those around us.

We hope that you will continue to help us, give sight to the sightless.

Mahinda Karunaratne
Founder and Chairperson

A Successful Twenty-Years Service

It is with great pleasure we write that we have served the underprivileged for 20 years. As a small charity with no staff and minimal administrative costs we have completed projects worth USD 271,875/- equivalent to LKR 71,997,195/- within this period. On 12th March 2003 we started the Karuna Trust Fund with just USD 4,600/- or LKR. 1,500,000/- donated by our founder Mr. Mahinda Karunaratne.  We were able to expand the fund size to USD 375,000/-  or LKR 120,000,000/- by now which constitutes donations from family members of the founder and income generated from selling waste paper in family owned group of companies. We utilize interest earned on investment of these monies and donations received from various donor organizations and individuals for our charitable activities.