Two water supply projects, one malnutrition programme sponsored by top companies

The water project that Kasun and his seven-member team handled was the second stage of ‘Care for our own’, a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project of Brandix Lanka Pvt. Ltd., to provide drinking for 450 people linked to the company.

Armed with maps, the team visited the homes of the employees across the country, taking meticulous notes and conducting a qualitative study, recalls Kasun, seeing in his mind’s eye the suffering that people had to undergo for lack of water. Some people had to walk more than three kms just to have a bath and then carry back water for cooking and drinking, says Kasun, pointing out that “kelawal athule geval thiyenwa” (some homes are deep within the jungle).

The emotion is tangible when he speaks of a young woman with a three-month-old baby, whom she had to leave alone at home, walk through lonely jungle paths to get to water. “She had been raped twice in broad daylight.”

The team suggested the “best possible solutions” which were tube wells, wells or rainwater harvesting which Brandix is implementing for the welfare of its employees.

It was to Nelumwewa, close to the Wilpattu National Park border, with 300 people, in the Puttalam district that Laksan and his team went, for a ‘Drinking water quality improvement’ project of Holcim Lanka Ltd. The people were impoverish- ed, mostly living in cadjan-thatched mud huts.

Here they did have water, but there was heavy kivula (hardness) and it was not drinkable. The team found that the people were forced to buy their water but they just could not afford it.

Holcim had built a tank to which the water was channelled through a community-based project from the Mee Oya but the water had impurities. The team suggested that the tank be renovated, with labour from the village itself. “It was a big challenge,” says Laksan, explaining that no men came forward.

“Our team which included girls and the village women did the work in a day,” he says with pride. Thereafter, the team suggested a filtration system using Moringa Oleifera ( murunga) seeds, he says, adding it is cost-effective and sustainable.

For Abdul and his team, a ‘Malnutrition Awareness Project’ for GlaxoSmithKline and the Education Ministry, took them to four schools in the Ratmalana-Moratuwa area. They not only evaluated student awareness about malnutrition but also found out the causes affecting such awareness or lack of it and developed a software to calculate and monitor the body-mass index (BMI) of the students.

Following the findings, nutrition experts had held workshops in the schools and also sent charts home to the parents to take measures to improve the nutrition of children who needed it.

Kasun speaks for all when he says that the involvement in the projects gave them confidence and experience, which tipped the scales when they faced interviews for jobs.