Saara Nilla, community kitchen: Wonderful social activity

Thusitha Jayasundera, the daughter of the late Mahendra and Usha Jayasundara, had embarked on this very vital social project established in memory of her late brother Hiran who had passed away in 2018. This has been done in remembrance of his cheer, kindness, courage, and his love of learning. This venture is to help the many vulnerable families in the area whose access to resources in respect of job opportunities and food is limited. Saara Nilla is the name given to this project which will benefit the community with the initiatives that focus on training and education and providing some job opportunities to help the vulnerable residents of the area so that their lifestyle could be uplifted from what it is at present. There are also other programmes, such as after school and childcare programmes which undoubtedly will help to alleviate some of the pressures faced by families.

Saara Nilla is not a charity; it is a social regeneration project. It hopes to engage directly with people who use it for support. Its main currency is not money, it is bartering resources and a concept called time banking. A radical idea embedded at the centre of Saara Nilla is that every human being’s time is equally precious. As an example, the time contribution of a CEO is, within Saara Nilla, equal to that of a single mum on day wages. This is what permaculture stands for-earth care, human care and fair share.

Saara Nilla is a permaculture demonstration site in an urban area where the buildings have been constructed using sustainable architecture practices and mainly using salvaged material for the purpose. The kitchen -garden has been planned as an answer to the scarcity problems that the vulnerable families will have to face in the not-too-distant future.

Saara Nilla consists of three important arms. They are 1) community kitchen, 2) permaculture vegetable garden and espalier orchard and 3) library and reading room.

The Community kitchen will be an open plan, multi-purpose place for community cooking and provide two lunches per day for 75 persons from the most vulnerable families in the area utilizing the vegetables from the garden. The kitchen space will also be utilized for visiting artists, cookery demonstrations, classes, IT seminars, pop-up banquets and intimate music and theatre performances. This kitchen will be a commercial kitchen on designated evenings and available as a venue for hire.

The permaculture vegetable garden and espalier orchard will have nutritional varieties of plants and trees alongside high yield vegetables, fruits and edible flowers grown using permaculture methods free of pesticides and will provide fresh organic produce for the community kitchen while demonstrating systems of growing, composting waste management and enabling biodiversity.

The garden will have a composter, seed bank, a well, bee farm, wormery, butterfly planting, edible rooftop planting, a kohila wala and an espalier orchard wall for calorie dense fruits such as mango, soursop and mulberry.

The library, which will be operational on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, will have a good stock of children’s books for 5 to 8 year olds. There is also a reconditioned laptop library. The aim is to have at least 15 reconditioned laptops for use on the premises to enhance computer skills.

Saara Nilla will host the first privately owned English Language Acquisition Centre (ELAC), which is geared to give pre-school children a chance to acquire the English Language in an informal and enjoyable way at a very young age. The books will be made available along with a Teacher’s guide in all three languages so that any adult can help the children with the syllabus even if they are not proficient in English. The ELAC along with the reading room will provide children with books story telling sessions and screened animations to facilitate enjoyment of English in preparation for school. The reconditioned laptop library will allow the children the use of the Saara Nilla on a time banking service.

Saara Nilla is a long-term project with an overall aim of building a sustainable future for its members from the local community by sharing skills and knowledge to foster confidence and enable self-reliance.

The aim of this invaluable project is to achieve the objectives of this project by

Maintaining a well-established community garden for growing fresh produce and to teach members about ecology and regenerative horticulture,

Providing freshly cooked nutritious food meals to vulnerable families and promoting food security in the local area,

Enabling the sharing of best practices in sustainable gardening and cooking, while providing opportunities for education and social interaction for people of all ages and abilities,

Creating a joyful meeting place with a view to strengthen diverse community relations and foster a psychological spaciousness and contentment,

Hosting cookery demonstrations, nutrition and vegan food based awareness programmes, conducting planting workshops and educating the local children about seasonal crops.

The project requires funds and material assistance to continue this invaluable service to be done to the vulnerable families targeted. If there donors who feel interested enough to participate in or financially contribute to the creation of the site, which is still ongoing, could contact Thusitha on her email address which is -saaranilla.sl@gmail.com.

HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE