Bringing Light: An Orphanage in Sri Lanka

SRI YASODARA ORPHANAGE in Sri Lanka is a home for girls who have lost their parents to the country's bitter civil war or the extreme poverty it has created. The orphanage is run by Loku Maniyo, a Buddhist nun, who offers love and shelter to over 80 girls from mixed backgrounds and both sides of the war. The home sets a gentle and powerful example of the possilibity of peaceful coexistence.

Sri Yasodara is committed to providing the best possible education publicly available to the girls. Meeting basic needs, however, such as providing clean food and lodging, is no small daily task. Dormitories are overcrowded and five nuns work late hours helping the girls aged three to eighteen.

FOTWA brought Art Refuge to the orphanage first in 1999. The girls responded enthusiastically and made paintings that were very different from the Tibetan images of mountains and yaks. In addition to painting, the girls study dance and music after school.

Loku Maniyo, who founded the home in 1986, receives no consistent financial support; every day is a struggle to provide food, transport to school, clothing, electricity and clean water. "If one day these children gather the strength to stand on their own feet I show them that it is important to help other children who are helpless like they have been. If they have two pencils I teach them to give away one, feel the sorrow of another like their own, and remembering the path they have come on, strive to bring light into others' lives."