As part of Chiune Liberation's project
we visited a school in Srilanka.
Our original project plan was to donate musical instruments to Srilanka so that kids can build friendship through music. However, one of our friend who lives in Srilanka pointed out to us, that there are children and schools who can not even afford paper and pen for their study. Before the fun stuff, they need to have their needs met.
that was like a big knock in the head
my personal dream is to create opportunities for kids, the next generation to build friendship all over the world
but
what i learned was that, people don't have the space to do that when their needs are not met
its hard to be motivated when there are so many barriers you have to break
so then we called out to people asking for stationary that they don't need so we can donate it to kids in Srilanka
Here's the picture of us trying to pack the stationary before going to the school
we received donations from all over in Japan
many of them actually bought new stationaries
and there was a group of girls who said "this is not something we send, we need to give this to the staff with our own hands" and came all the way to our office to hand us the donations they bought.
wow, just wow
we were touched by every single persons care and love
but we had so much trouble trying to connect a place to donate
we kept getting misunderstood
the people thought that the reason why we wanted to donate
was cuz we wanted to "look good" as an organisation
and that we just wanted to go to take photos and make it look like we did something
after many many many dialogue
and trying to prove that what we wanted to do was the real stuff
we were finally able to connect to a school !
This school has 152 students
whom 52 students can not afford to buy shoes and bags
so with their bare feet, they walk up the mountain
and carry their books in their hands
there are so many things i want to write about what happened that day
but i think i've written too much already so i won't go into detail
but i guess what left a strong impression on me
was the kids smiles,
i will never ever ever forget the warmth i felt from the kids
if we had more time, i really wanted to ask each kids names
build friendship and really convey to each of them
that i am so happy to finally meet them
the kids are really excited about the stationaries
and we hope this becomes some kind of hope for them
through this experience
i've learned the difficulty of supporting another country
donating is not easy, its not just about just give and done
sometimes that can create unnecessary suffering
we are fortunate that we made a friendship with a particular person in Srilanka (which i won't say whom here) who is guiding us to do this the right way
not too fast, not too much
slowly and steadily
this is the starting point for this project!
I'm not done yet at all!
we will be doing more things with Srilanka, so please keep an eye on our project
I personally want to convey my biggest gratitude to those who supported this project in their own unique way. Each persons contribution was so significant for that magic to happen
Thank you so much!
Yuko,
Here's one the pictures I took,
Hiro Aoki, our professional photographer took real great photos
hopefully i can share that soon too!
