“Westgarth Mothers” Join with Eco Friendly Volunteers’ mission

Westhgarth Mothers Group (WMG) is a small group of parents at my kids school who have got together to help ECO-V’s annual help kids program. Helping around 50 kids to go to school every year by donating all the books and stationary was an annual program we ran under ECO-V. This was done with the help of “Friends of ECO-V” in Sri Lanka and abroad. Now WMG will be with us in the future projects. See our earlier blog (http://ecofriendlyvolunteers.blogspot.com/2009/02/eco-v-helps-children-to-go-to-school-in.html) on our work.

Libby and Me

During our stay in Melbourne for a year, we came across many great friends through the Westgarth Primary school in Northcote where our kids attend. Libby (whose daughter Labanya was with Nipuna at grade 1 last year) got the idea when I discussed the work I done so far with her and she suggested to have a fund raising event to help needy kids in Sri Lanka. She came up with this brilliant idea of having a Sri Lankan lunch for her friends as a fund raising event. It was such a fun event! We organized it on the 5th of February at Libby’s place. We expected at least 20 people but what a day! we got 28 adults and 25 kids!!! Parents helped us to cook a Sri Lankan meal while kids were playing happily. It reminded me arms giving in Sri Lanka as all helped us to prepare the meal. It was a learning experience for most of them as no body had experience in cooking Sri Lankan curries. I gave instructions to moms to cut the vegetables, anions and green chilies.Some happily rolled cutlets and wrapped them with bread crumbs. Some fathers fried papadam and cutlets and some arranged them on banana leaves…what a day…!! when everything was ready by 1.30 pm, all were exited about the food as they all loved the aromatic smell of spices.

 We ended up cooking rice, spicy chicken curry, parippu (dhal), mild cucumber curry, cabbage mallum, cutlets (Tuna balls), papadam, and avocado as a dessert. Libby and I explained the purpose of the event and we conducted a fun event distributing a questionnaire prepared about Sri Lanka. It was named as “Are you smarter than a grade 4? ” .
 Latter Buhusuru who is in grade 4 had to correct all the answers…surprisingly no body got all 5 questions correct. Most of them didn’t know about the way of greeting in Sri Lanka “Ayubowan” (meaning-may all living beings live long) but they all were able to name 3 popular cricketers in Sri Lanka!

 At the end of the day we were very happy and got enough money to run few more projects for the kids this year. It will be used to help needy kids when I go back to Sri Lanka next month. We also got many story books for the kids in Sri Lanka. What a wonderful day!! Thanks to Libby and her family who enthusiastically organized the event and I think it’s a long lasting bond between Westgarth Mothers and ECO-V.
Thank you for all who really had the warm hearts to donate towards this mission. Looking forward to keep you updated about our projects. Your friendship helped us to have a wonderful stay in Northcote! Thanks to Jemma (Libby's elder daughter) we have these photos and will try to arrange a slide show with more photos soon.