Salvation Army’s annual appeal for donations
The Salvation Army this week launched its annual appeal to raise funds that will help support its residential and community services across Sri Lanka.
The key focus of the launch event in Colombo was the unveiling of the global organisation’s first-ever public annual report for its Sri Lankan arm. Through both image and story, the report tells how The Salvation Army has journeyed and developed with the nation since 1883.
In his inaugural address, Chair of The Salvation Army’s National Advisory Board, Eraj Wijesinghe said, “A 135-year existence and involvement in the community to uplift the lives of thousands during both normal times and times of great calamity is a record that The Salvation Army must be proud of. The fact that it has grown to be one of the leading not-for-profit organisations established throughout the country is a challenge to the new advisory board in terms of helping it go forward to greater heights of mission and performance.”
He explained that this annual report signalled a shift in the charity’s operational style. “Serving Sri Lanka in collaboration, not isolation, is our new priority. We want to partner with others in seeing the nation rise up to take care of its own humanitarian needs; to be increasingly self-reliant. Mahatma Gandhi once challenged his own people: ‘The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members’. This is a clear and present challenge for us now in Sri Lanka.”
Titled ‘Answering the Call’, the report shows The Salvation Army working in 20 of the country’s 25 districts, in eight of the nine provinces. It tells the story of this work as it happens at the front line – out of 62 Salvation Army outstations in rural, regional and city settings islandwide. Many thousands of people and hundreds of communities benefit on a regular basis from this work.
Projects include large-scale safe-water wells and testing for kidney disease across the Polonnaruwa district with a combined investment of Rs. 110 million; provision of nutrition programmes across eight districts; long-standing residential care for mothers and babies, children and elders, accessible islandwide; and hostel accommodation services for young employed and differently-abled people. The Salvation Army also addresses wide-ranging human needs – person to person, community to community – through its many corps and community-based centres and provides extensive disaster services.
The annual report not only describes the work of The Salvation Army, but its identity and history – nationally and internationally. It also discusses global initiatives to align The Salvation Army’s accountability and governance systems with contemporary best practice, making all its systems and processes ‘fit for purpose’ in an ‘environment of constant change’. Finally, it presents its accounts, audited by Ernst and Young.
“Worldwide, more than 28,000 fully-trained, commissioned and ordained Salvation Army officers serve in 130 countries, including 157 officers here in Sri Lanka,” said National Head for Sri Lanka Colonel Yousaf Masih. “Like most countries on planet earth, and certainly in South Asia, there are contrasts in human life and experience in Sri Lanka that leave some people wanting for nothing while many others tread dangerously and are permanently close to ruin. And I’m glad and proud to say that it’s at the ‘ruin end’ of humanity that you will most often find The Salvation Army in Sri Lanka, bringing transformation in some of the poorest and most at-risk communities of the country.”
The target for The Salvation Army’s 2018 annual appeal is Rs. 5.5 million. First donations were also announced, amounting to Rs. 2 million.