Smile Sri Lanka holds carnival for underprivileged children
Smile Foundation Ceylon, a registered charity also known as ‘Smile Sri Lanka’ organised a carnival for around 2000 underprivileged children at the Mount Lavinia Park on December 26. Many sponsors supported the carnival in various ways.
Smile Sri Lanka’s President and founder Vivek Jayasuriya told the Sunday Times, “We began the project by helping around 300 kids initially and the number has grown to 2000 today.
Every year we top ourselves to do something bigger and better and eventually end up in organising a carnival and a whole day of events for the kids which makes their day happy.”
He quoted Frank Sinatra’s song, ‘When you are smiling the whole world smiles with you.’The song had inspired him in starting the foundation.
The mission of the foundation is to help the less fortunate and orphan youth of the country by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and ability to succeed in the future.
They hope to bring awareness to the fortunate youth of the country, of the living conditions and plight of the orphans and street kids, thus building youth who are socially aware.
The foundation consists of a bunch of energetic volunteers and professionals who combine their skills to help make the programmes successful.
The main aim of the foundation is to ensure access to quality education to the poor and marginalised kids in society. But access alone is not enough.
In school, children must be assured of a safe environment enabling them to realize their potential.
The education programmes of the foundation work to ensure the various factors necessary for quality education such as teacher education relationship, community involvement in education, classroom construction, development and supply of materials.
The foundation also helps communities to identify the obstacles to education for their children. Overcoming these obstacles plays a pivotal role in the ‘Smile’ programmes.