My Volunteer Story featured by UN Volunteers

Just seen this article on http://www.iyv10srilanka.com (International Year of Volunteers):

http://www.iyv10srilanka.com/2012/01/13/samante-kamaladiwela-from-dusseldorf-germany

A resume

Being back in Germany again I miss the sunshine and the warm climate in Sri Lanka. It's raining and it's cold in Düsseldorf. Horrible.... But on the other side it's nice to see my friends again.

It's time to make a resume of my time in Sri Lanka. In following I'd like to summarise all my activities that I conducted during my 3-months-stay.

IT-training

• Extended the IT-basics course with additional content (at FOG)
• Created advanced web programming syllabus (PHP/MySQL) which can be easily added as an additional module to the web design or programming syllabus (at FOG).
• Conducted a IT-basics class for a group of teachers at Gintota secondary school (at FCS)

Yoga

• Conducted 3 Yoga classes at the sports centre for under 15/over 15 kids of cricket and swimming teams (at FOG)
• Conducted a Yoga class at Gintota secondary school for 13th grade students

Business Productivity Outsourcing (for FOG)

• Supported FOG-staff with coordination of the 2 existing BPO projects
• Created a compelling covering letter (2 pager with the profile of FOG describing the holistic village model and it's services) 
• Applied with covering letter as a BPO subcontractor at several big international BPO companies who are also doing business in Sri Lanka
• Setup accounts in job portals (Elance and oDesk) to create applications for BPO jobs. Applying for several BPO jobs (data entry, copy writing, web research, etc.) per week. 
• Setup workshop to introduce BPO initiative to potential BPO agents (graduates of FOG IT-courses) and check availability of resources
• Support in the strategic planning of the BPO initiative

Cooperations (with FOG)

• Succeeded in setting up a cooperation between Dialog/FOG with Dialog offering a wide range of services which could enhance the work of FOG in future
• Initiated a cooperation with the training company Corporate Skills. Corporate Skills shall provide trainings for free for the BPO staff of FOG in the near future  

Collected Donations

• 1 multimedia projector
• 80 USB pen drives
• 20 mobile broadband USB dongles
• 50 microSD memory cards 
• 5 mobile broadband MiFi Routers

When reading all the listed things above I can hardly believe that I did all this. But it's the reality and I'm very happy that I could contribute this.
But what makes me happy the most is that I met so many nice people during these 3 months in Sri Lanka. So many of them made a difference to me and showed up to me with so much gratitude, hospitality and friendship. I have no words for this....

I want to thank the people who made my stay an unforgetable event:

Saman - Dasun - Fazana - Kushil - Dilip - Suranga - Anura - Gayani - Amila - Champa - Sampath - Anjula - Thushara - Athula - A. Subhana - Lucky - Jesse - Natalie - Ed - Leonora - Claire - Alex - Myles - Ranjith T. - Dhammika - Deepika - Udhithika - Dayani - Supun - Chaminda - Ariyapala - L.G. - Aruna - Ven. Jnanarathana - Ven. Mahaname - Ven. Dhammarathana - Ven. Munirathana - Ven. Mahinda - Ven. Sugatharathana - Ven. Sugunarathana - Ven. Indharathana - Ven. Somarathana - Ven. Samitharathana - Ven. Amitharathana - Ven. Pangnarathana - Ven. Sangharathana - Ven. Mudhitharathana - Ven. Mudhithamano - Ven. Guttasila - Brother Noah Yuttadhammo - Ven. Anoma - Ven. Manirathana - Lyndon Mason - Kalhari - Sonia - Janakie - Michael - Keerthi - Ranjit & Moneena - Dilum - Chapa - Emesha - Iresha - Sheriff - Nandha - Lokumama - Obash - Shyamila - Dimuthu - Anusha - Punmihi Anuhas - Nandasiri - Judy

Thank you for everything!!!

Who knows... maybe I'll be back one day to continue my work in Sri Lanka.....

A message to Mr. Esley and a journey into the past

Unfortunately I'm ill these days. I got the worst fever flu since decades and cannot do anything except resting in bed. I cancelled all appointments and activities and just try to do nothing.

But even this bad incidence showed up some good sides. Yesterday night for example I couldn't sleep due to the high fever and also my mind was restless and jumping from one subject to another. So I was abiding in a delirium state lasting nearly all night. A bit like the 90ies TV series "Twilight Zone" actually :-). Several interesting ideas and thoughts, experienced past memories but also a lot of confusion and obscurities came into my head. What a pity that I was too weak to stand up and write them down... But one thing I remember which I will explain in the following:

Recently Mr. Esley (code name) told me that he read through my blog posts and had the feeling that the posts sound to him like a adventure story for children with all these snakes, lizards, bats, etc.. I was happy to hear from my dear and close friend Mr. Esley. But I also felt a bit irritated because of his comment. It was completely not my intention to give this blog an adventure touch. Minutes went by thinking it over and over again. Then suddenly some memories out of my early childhood arised. It was the time when I was between 3-7 years old. During that time me and my parents lived in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Like video clips I could recall at once many situations where I played in our garden (which I experienced as a tropic rainforest because of it's wilderness) or at neighbours' places. There were so many encounterings with animals during this period. Dears, monkeys, elephants, jackals, snakes, lizards, scorpions, centipedes, ants, etc. in all colours, shapes and sizes. I always faced them with no fear but interest and friendship which was sorrowed my parents a lot. There were a lot of incidents where my father need to kill very poisonous snakes in the garden. But luckily I never got harmed seriously. These 5 years have really left a remarkable trace in me. No wonder that in the early eighties when we came to Germany my favorite cinema movie was Mowgli, the Indian boy living in the djungle with most animal being his friends :-).

So I guess with having this landmark in my soul I understand now Mr. Esley's comment. Yeah and he's right. I still love animals, I still freeze when I see an interesting animal around to watch and I still feel not much fear when encountering fierce creatures (Of course a lion would scare me....). And this after more than 30 years! Funny how psychology works...

I could tell some more stories about Yesterday's twilight zone experiences but I feel tired now....

So thank you Mr. Esley for providing this comment which resulted in gaining this insight.

It may be the last time though that I will report anything about animals in this blog. Only 3 days left, then I'll be back in Germany. And I guess not a lot interesting thins will happen within the next days.

But stay tuned. I'll be back soon to publish the last blog post(s)!

A weekend in Colombo to link two loose ends

I was the weekend in Colombo. FOG's founder Kushil Gunasekara invited me to his home in Colombo and I was happy to accept the invitation on Sunday. Coincidently he had also an appointment with an Buddhist monk from New Zealand in the evening and he asked me whether I would like to join. Of course! This was one of these opportunities you rarely have in live. So I accompanied him to the wise buddhist monk who stayed 7 years alone meditating in the Sri Lankan forest. It was really awesome to speak to him. You could feel his mindfulness in every second of the conversation. After 3 enlightening hours of talk we left the place. Also a monk needs to rest :-)

On Monday I had a business meeting with a good friend of my cousin who offered to support FOG with corporate skills trainings. This was a very interesting and profitable offer for FOG at this point in time where FOG wanted to set up more BPO services to provide a sustainable income for the foundation's activities. Therefore I directly discussed this with FOG and we made the appointment on Monday evening and Fazana Ibrahim, head of the IT and psycho-social section, came with me. It was a very good discussion and we made a plan how to move forward and which steps to take next. I was very happy to make this link between the two dots.....

Unfortunately when I travelled back to Colombo Tuesday morning my body was aching and I felt ill. When I arrived in the Southern Province again I had already fever. Due to the heavy rain in the past days many people where ill and it was only a matter of time when that I would get infected :-(. 

Ok now no work anymore just rest and relax the next days...

A wonder this bus can drive....

Oh my gosh I've seen a lot during my time in Sri Lanka but this piece of scrap was nearly impossible to believe if I haven't seen it with my own eyes.....

Take a look:

Sri Lankan mobile operator Dialog supporting FOG

When I prepared my volunteer project in Germany I contacted the mobile operator Dialog in Sri Lanka. Dialog is Vodafone's partner network in Sri Lanka as Vodafone has no direct presence in this country. With the help of some very supportive colleagues at Vodafone I got the contacts of the COO and CTO. I send an email describing my project and soon after got a positive response from Supun Werasinghe, the Chief Operating Officer of Dialog in Sri Lanka. He introduced me to Michael de Soyza who is heading the department of social affairs. With this connection set up I went to Sri Lanka and started my work. I always kept the Dialog connection in mind but the first weeks here were quite a struggle for me as I had some problems to obtain the appropriate visa. At the beginning I also had no clue how Dialog could help other than providing cash or equipment. My intention was to setup a sustainable partnership and not one time donation. 

A few weeks ago I contacted Dialog again with some ideas on how to cooperate with the Foundation of Goodness. Dialog was luckily still willing to help and Yesterday we had a meeting with Michael de Soyza at the FOG centre in Seenigama. It was a very fruitful discussion and Michael came up with some interesting ideas for Dialog's potential support:

1. Medical Centre
• Provide capability for video surgery in case of additional assistance of medical experts is needed. With this capability (video application and dedicated internet line) it is possible to incorporate medical experts from all over the world
• Provide health care applications. Examples: web based patient database or sms application which is able to send reminder sms to patients treated in the Seenigama medical centre. The reminder sms can be individually configured to the patients medical treatment (e.G. 3 sms per day reminding the patient to take the list of drugs to take)
2. Business services
• Implementation of SME Toolkit. Dialog has already vast experience in enabling their salesforce (partnering shops) to enhance their business through the SME Toolkit. It needs to be assessed how FOG could avail on this
• Tradenet.lk is a mobile application which brings together people who offer or need specific things. It's a bit like ebay but also different as it only brings together people via sms/email based on their profile on the platform
3. Children's club
• Dialog has a portal where customers can buy pictures for mobile wallpapers. The children in the pre school and the children's club are drawing a lot of pictures during their time they spent at FOG. These pictures could be photographed and then be uploaded to the Dialog's web portal where customers could buy these pictures.
4. IT
• The FOG IT education centre in Seenigama qualifies a lot of people of the rural community in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. Dialog maybe can set up an ICT Application Development lab where applications can be tested by the students and Dialog gets the consolidated feedback looped back as input for further development. If the students are skilled enough the could even develop applications for Dialog.

These are the results of the first session yesterday. We will follow up in the next weeks to detail the concept and carve out the necessary steps to take from both sides. I'm really happy that a simple email to the COO of Dialog turned out to the beginning of a promising partnership between Dialog and FOG. I'm sure my FOG colleagues will sustain the momentum we now created to build up the Dialog partnership. I will anyway keep an eye on it when I'm back in Germany... :-)

Saying goodbye to Gintota school

Yesterday I held the last yoga class and also the last IT-course for the teachers as the school vacation has started now. Both classes, the teachers and the students, handed over some small gifts to me. I was very pleased because their thankfulness was so impressing. But the highlight was today. The school principal invited to the lunch party at a hotel nearby. All teachers were attending the party and I have never seen so many people singing on stage. Nearly every second teacher went to the stage (a band was hired for this event) and sang a song. Not everyone was a singing talent though :-). But It was nice to see how committed the people where to contribute something to the party. Nice....

Even the principal performed a song on stage:

The party went from 11:30 am to 3 pm. The last two hours (after lunch) the teachers danced and danced and danced.....