Sri Lanka knows many orphanages also called children’s homes. These homes harbour real orphans and children left by their family who could no longer take care of them for various reasons.

Some children’s homes are quite small in size and harbour about 20 boys or girls. These homes are reasonable well off but still lack a great number of facilities which would improve circumstances for the children.

Why is help needed?

Real issues come with the larger children homes. Some have over 100 children to take care of and one of the orphanages LEO supports in Colombo even has around 280 children!

Although the homes have staff to take care of daily business this doesn’t necessarily include taking personal care of the children. Staff is expensive and employed to keep the orphanages running. They are there to ensure that the children have breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to school, have a bed to sleep in and much more.

Quality time to spend with the children is therefore extremely rare. Hence both staff and children are extremely happy when foreign volunteers come to help out and spend time with the children
(click here for more on volunteering).

And whilst volunteers help with homework, sports, play, singing, dancing, art and more the children have an excellent chance to learn English too! And English is of great importance to find a job when they are older.

Material aid

LEO Project Foundation does not only help placing volunteers at children’s homes but also provides material aid. This is tricky business however which needs to be closely monitored. One must make certain that aid does indeed reach the children and LEO keeps a close watch!

Most children’s homes require clothing, school uniforms, shoes, sock, beds, mattresses, bedding and wardrobes. A number of them require sanitary facilities such as showers, water tanks for bathing and cloth washing. As you can imagine there is a long list of different needs per children’s home.

However, almost all children’s homes require urgent improvement of food. Food consists of mainly rice and only a few vegetables.

Vegetables are expensive and therefore a privilege. This is why LEO Project Foundation is eager to start Square Foot Gardens at a number of these homes, starting at the Colombo children’s home.

Square Foot Gardening is a method developed in the US and aimed at making it easy to grow fruits and vegetables with minimum input and maximum result (read more about Square Foot Gardens here).

How to help the children

All the needs mentioned above require something that the homes come short on: money & foreign volunteers. Therefore we welcome your help by means of donations and sponsoring (please click here to sponsor or donate) and/or to coming to Sri Lanka on a responsible volunteering holiday.

LEO Project Foundation will make certain that all funds are applied wisely toward providing sustainable aid and helping the children.