Features
Praiseworthy benefactors: A heartwarming story
Assist RRP projects
Dr V Sarveswaran is the founder of Assist Resettlement and Renaissance (Assist RR) charity. He was born and brought up in Jaffna but left the country as a young man with next to nothing, consequent to the ’83 riots, settled in the UK and built successful careers in engineering and business. For many years now he has been returning to the land of his birth on charitable missions, assisting many of Sri Lanka’s poorest people through health, livelihood and education projects.
The cataract surgery program has been hugely successful to date, with dozens of surgeons and medical teams in 26 different hospitals reducing the significant waiting lists that exist post-pandemic and in the wake of the economic crisis. The cost to patients self-funding their own cataract surgeries is in excess of Rs 100,000, a figure prohibitively high for the beneficiaries of these free surgeries – none of whom would otherwise be able to find the means to save their own sight, without such charitable support.
The project is a fine example of a private-public partnership, the blueprint for which is now well established and being used in the north, south, east, west and many points in between. Working hand in hand with government hospitals, surgeons and medical staff, the Alaka and Ananda Foundations provide them with the lenses and consumables required for cataract surgeries, when they otherwise don’t have them.
Funds Raised
Mark and Donna Penney are the founding members of Team Solihull, a team of fundraisers which takes its name from Solihull School, a large coeducational independent day school founded in 1560 in Solihull, West Midlands, England, where they have both worked for many years. Their team raises funds by taking on ultra challenge walks, as long as 55 km. in one day, seeking sponsors from friends, family, their school community and Sri Lankan diaspora around the world, as well as from the supporters of Assist RR and the International Medical Health Organisation (IMHO), USA. Over the course of their last three fundraisers alone, which were for cataract surgeries, clean water projects and the upgrading and building of paediatric facilities, they have raised over £250,000 – every penny of which has gone directly to their thousands of beneficiaries around Sri Lanka.
In August 2023, Mark’s sister died of cancer at age 48. Sonya Lynch was a paediatric nurse in Cork, Ireland. Following the loss of their mother, her three children: Alex 17, Isabel 15, and Isaac 12, set about collecting funds in Ireland to build a legacy in the name of their mother in Sri Lanka. They joined hands with Team Solihull and succeeded in collecting almost £25,000 GBP from a sponsored walk of 25 kms around London. Team Solihull then took on a 42KM challenge around Central London in January 2024 and IMHO USA very generously incentizised their sponsors by matching all donations made up to $30,000 USD. With this wonderful support, and that of the school community, and diaspora in the UK and USA, over £120,000 was raised.
The funds raised will now be used to build a new paediatric ward on Kayts Island. Being one of seven islands off the Northern Peninsula, any child falling sick within the catchment area of the islands is directed to Kayts Base Hospital, the apex hospital, around which are seven divisional hospitals and one Primary Medical Care Unit. Some of the islands are connected by causeways, whilst others require a boat ride to reach them.
The paediatric ward in Kayts, built in loving memory of Sonya Lynch (nee Penney) will surely save many a child’s life and improve both the level of care and the breadth of access for sick children for decades to come.
I divert here to mention the impact that Sonya Lynch has had in Ireland as well as in Sri Lanka. In memory of her excellence as an advocate for improving the holistic care of cancer sufferers and their families, and as the inaugural winner of the Irish Cancer Society’s Public and Patient Involvement Award, the society has in turn inaugurated the awarding of research grants to cancer specialists in her name. The ‘Sonya Lynch Award’ for 2024 aims to support excellent cancer researchers working in metastatic breast cancer. The recent opening of a six-bed High Dependency Unit (HDU) in the paediatric ward of the Kalmunai Base Hospital, and the upgrading of the paediatric HDU of Batticaloa Teaching Hospital was also in the name of Sonya Lynch.
Benefit to Sri Lanka
We in this country are the beneficiaries of the funds raised by Team Solihull and the wonderful work implemented on their behalf by Assist RR and IMHO.
Cataract surgeries have been, and will continue to be, conducted all over the island by doctors resident in the hospitals where surgeries are performed, plus volunteer doctors from other parts of Sri Lanka who come together to help the poor.
The paediatric facilities have, and will, significantly upscale the quality and scope of the care that two hospitals in the east and one in the north can offer the populations they serve.
And that’s not all! Team Solihull funds have also been used very effectively by Assist RR in the east and north, and by IMHO in the Upcountry when providing clean drinking water for islanders, villagers, school children and tea plantation workers. Here too, the beneficiaries’ number in their thousands – many of whom now have direct access to drinking water for the first time.
It’s worth remembering that in the midst of all the challenges and bad news stories that dominate the airwaves, there are heartwarming ones too.
I started my article by naming this country serendipitous. It is, but with the wonder is present much poverty, and the need for remedying some, at least. of its consequences. The charities I write about and their leaders are doing just this. We people of Sri Lanka thank them sincerely, appreciatively and gratefully.