Eisenhower fellowship in USA

I am writing to you as an Eisenhower fellow for 2012. It was a great achievement for me personally to get nominated and selected as an Eisenhower fellow for South Asian region in 2012. This year there are 21 fellows from South Asian region (Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) travelling in USA for 8 weeks meeting leaders, visiting institutions and getting training in their fields.

I am visiting 10 states in USA to meet people in environmental conservation field, attending conferences, and getting trainings to strengthen my skills.

the fellowship started with the South Asian regional conference in Sri Lanka where all the fellows met in Sri Lanka on the 27th of September. Then we all flew to Philadelphia where the Eisenhower fellowship programme head office is based at. At the moment I am getting the orientation along with 20 other fellows, planing the travel and meeting some leaders here. It was very interesting to share ideas, experience with all other fellows in the region who had given some significant leadership to their countries in their own fields.

I will update you all about my experience in USA for next 7 weeks.

With John Wolf president of EF fellowship

Sri Lankan fellows at regional conference in Sri Lanka

With Leigh Cohen the programme officer who arranges all meetings for me

Trudy and Sion join friends of ECO-V

Today our day began at the infamous 4.30am ECO-V start, where we woke up to start our journey up north with Kanchana who had to deliver two talks to different groups. The first was at an archaeological site at the ancient Yapahuwa civilization ruins for the staff and workers, and the second was for the “Training for Trusteeship” program, organized by the Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education and Research (WICPER).




Archeology staff at Yapahuwa



Gayani in action

After about four hours of driving (and snoozing), we arrived at the first location – Yapahuwa. It was an amazing experience to see first hand the excavations of an ancient city of Sri Lanka, dating back to over 1300 years ago. The site looks very similar to Sri Lanka’s famous Sigiriya, but a smaller version and is supported by the Department of Arts and Culture of Sri Lanka. Guyani, a Kelani NadeeYathri, recently got a job as an archaeologist at the site and being the enthusiastic environmentalist she is, began her campaign to raise the environmental awareness of her work colleagues. We were privelidged enough to be given a tour of the excavation site, where we talked to the workers and archeologists who were uncovering ruins and trying to reveal the history of the ancient civilization. We witnessed both the hard work of the archeological team as well as the old temple structures built around a towering rock. We ended the tour at the temple site and walked down very steep steps to the hall where Kanchana was to give her presentation. Over 50 people attended the talk, consisting mainly of archaeologists, labourers, draftsmen, assistants and also the chair of the project. Kanchana talked deeply about consciousness of ourselves and the environment around us, and not just delivered the talk beautifully and passionately, but made people emotional including the chairman, who vowed to immediately begin local campaigns to raise environmental awareness.

We were fed well, eating local cassava and poll sambal (coconut salad) served on banana leaf, then we hit the road again to head to the next destination – Anaradhapura. Two hours later, we arrived at the beautiful training centre called Islander or heart of Sewa Lanka, where the “Training for Trusteeship” program was being held. This is an annual training program coordinated by WICPER, a peace and justice organization in Sri Lanka. The training targets young future leaders of the country, to understand their roles and duties, to their communities, environment and future generations. Kanchana delivered a similar presentation to this group of 60 motivated youth, the majority coming from Sri Lanka, and a minority from Maldives, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. This group was tougher to speak to, as they already had a good understanding of the environmental and social problems the world faces, our global development challenges and the role of government and civil society groups. Their questions led us to see that although they were knowledgeable about problems, they don’t know what to do with this knowledge or how to overcome or solve the big issues that we all face. For example, one young lady asked, “What does self-governance without government look like?”. Many big questions like this were asked, and due to the lack of time we had, it was difficult to answer and discuss these issues.

At TFT

Paticipants of TFT

So we finally got back on the road to head back to Colombo around 8.30pm, with a stop for dinner, reaching home around 1am, crawling into bed and thinking about these young people and the task they have ahead of them in this world. We have thought about this and continue to think about it – how can we equip young people in this world, so they can not only live sustainable lives, but can bring about social change in order to ensure future generations can live in a beautiful, just and peaceful environment?



This blog was written by Trudy and Sion (friends of Kanchana’s & ECO-V)

Activities in August 2012

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It seems like we could not update our friends of  ECO-V for long time. Some people asked us why we were silent. Its not that we didn’t do any work but was engaged with more work and didn’t have time to update. So here again some news for you. 
There were several activities taken place in the month of August. One was for kids...
The month of August was the school holidays here. I was involved with a programme conducted by Vishwa Nikethan Peace Center at Sarvodaya, Moratuwa where I serve as a trustee.

It was a programme for kids aged between 5-11 years to give the experience of Nature and increase their sensitivity towards mother Earth. We talked about self discipline through meditation, learning and getting connected with natural services, importance of Natural resources and increasing consciousnesses etc. It’s not possible to do such change within one day but kids need more and more experience like this to learn right from beginning. It was very encouraging to work with them and answer to their questions and to see how they reflect nature. 

Tharindu a river journey Yathree in action

Tharindu, one of the Sri Lankan youths that participated in the river journey last year, has been enthuastically inititating environment projects within his community. On day two of my time in Sri Lanka, Wednesday 4^th July, Tharindu had organised three awareness raising presentation to take place at schools in his local area. Kanchana, Sameera a young university student who is getting training at ECO-V office, and I travelled the distance to present on climate change and sustainability in a more remote area of Sri Lanka.

The three schools were situated in Ruwanwella area, two of which were Sinhalese and one Tamil school ensuring that the message and knowlegde had a large and varied audience. Each presentation lasted an hour and a half and I was amazed with the undivided attention Kanchana was receiving from the students. At one of the schools the presentation for the older students was done in the main hall during a time that other students were on lunch break. To my surprise the young students snuck in, choosing to listen to Kanchana over enjoying their lunch. The student’s willingness to listen, absorb information and learn about new subjects I believe marks a fine character in Sri Lankans that I have witnessed during my stay here. Within one day this awareness program reached over 450 school students and many teachers. 

While this presentation was happening we also conducted a survey to get a picture of the knowledge and prior awareness of these topics that these students held. The results highlighted the lack of information provided around sustainability and climate change, illustrating the need for further awareness raising in all areas of Sri Lanka. Education and awareness is one of the first and most important steps to social change. This was also a very important networking opportunity by building relationships with different schools and communities around Sri Lanka.

Tharindu addressing gathering at his own school, with the presence of school principle 

After these presentations took place we had an appointment a local politician to talk about the projects that have been happening and to organise a date for a tree planting to happen in the area. These plantings will help the environments resistance towards the impacts of climate change while also reducing CO2 emissions. During this meeting the politician received us well marking the bridges that are slowly being formed between social issues and politicians in Sri Lanka.

Youths like Tharindu are inititating these grassroot events that are creating positive impacts while also encouraging movement towards a greener future. Eventually it would be the aim of ECO-V and Journeys for Climate Justice to provide these youths with enough support, information and training that they feel comfortable enough to do these presentations and meetings themselves. ECO-V and Journeys for Climate Justice is providing continual contact with these youth to enable their development and empower change within them so that they are able to create further change in their community.

children  of Rajasinghe Central College at mini exhibition on Climate change

Gathering at Rajasinghe Central College, Ruwanwella

Gathering at Tamil School in Ruwanwella

This campaign is called "My Future My Country" which has initiated by ECO-V to create awareness on Climate Change at Grass Root levels tafter Kelani Nadee Yathra and it is sponsored by Deutche Bank of Sri Lanka.

A visit to an Organic Farm

I would like to well come Karina Donkers from Australia. She is the 7th volunteer we had for this year from overseas and the 3rd volunteer from Journeys for Climate Justice (JCJ). Just like any other volunteer we invited her to write few blogs for us. Here she wrote..

Sri Lanka is a beautiful and magical place yet has to face the confronting challenges of a changing climate. I have started my month of working as a Journeys for Climate Justice volunteer and am blessed with the opportunity to work along side Kanchana, president of ECO-V and renowned conservationist.  On my first morning in Sri Lanka we set out to visit an organic farm in a nearby area. Trudy and Sion (friends of Kanchana) who are willing to settle down in Sri lanka after so many year working in Burma also joined with us. We had been invited to see the progress of the farm, to share knowledge and network with the workers there. Amongst the workers was a man named Sampath, who had been working in environment and organic farming in Sri Lanka for 18 years and had produced 11 books about organic farming. Both kanchana and Sampath were UNDP/GEF small grant winners for their projects few years ago. This small group of workers had only had this plot of land for seven months and had already created an amazing sustainable food source, which was producing delicious and healthy food, some of which we took home with us.

Thushara, Sion, Trudy, Karina and Kanchana walking to the farm

Sampath explaining about his organic farm

Sampath raised the concern of not being able to find heritage seeds of certain plants as they were not readily available as hybrid seeds had taken over in the area. Sourcing these seeds is important and also raises the need for a seed bank. Eventually this organic farm hopes to expand the availability of hertiage seeds so that they are available for the entire community.   

During this visit we established a partnership with Sampath where their organic farm will be used as a place to run workshops and teach Sri Lankan youth about organic farming. These skills and knowledge need to be passed on to younger generations so that they are practiced. Through these workshops youth will be able to grasp the importance of this way of farming and share their knowledge with their local and wider communities.  On a grassroots level an important part of building resilience to climate change in communities is sharing skills and knowledge.These workshops will not only build their knowledge and skills but hopefully empower them to become young leaders in this time of transition.