Saivite Tamil Foundation - Rishi' visit to Sri Lanka

Event:   Children Home visit by Rishi Thoundunathan            

Where:  Sivan Arul Illam, Thiruketheeswaram

When:  October, 2009

I visited Sivan Arul Illam in Thiruketheeswaram recently. Sivan Arul Illam is a welfare home that houses more than 100 children. Of them 70 are actually from an orphange, Arivucholai in Kilinochi that was set up after the horrific tsunami of 2004 when these children lost their parents. 

During the height of the most recent war in Sri Lanka, the wardens of this orphanage, most of them who sacrificed their own personal life to take care of the children, decided to make a daring exodus from Vanni for the sake of the survival of the children. They risked their own life, faced so much tirials such as lack of food and water, but amazingly they were able to move all these 70 odd orphans from Kilinochi, to Vavuniya and eventually to settle in Sivan Arul Illam in Thiruketheeswaram. These children are between 4 and 13 years old, and indeed the task of moving these children from Kilinochi to Vavuniya camps and then months later to Thiruketheeswarm would not have been possible but for divine intervention in some form or another. 

When I visited the children the hardships that they had underwent was evident in their faces. Having gone through 2 disasters, one by nature, the tsunami and another man made, these children have scars for life that need to be healed. Like these children there are thousands more stuck in IDP camps that need help.

Here are some pictures.