Pembara Amma (Loving Mother) Environmental Project
Background
Social Disharmony due to 26 years old civil war, which was militarily defeated recently and Environment Pollution are two major problems faced by the Sri Lankan civil society. SCI SL has been involved in a long term project on “Peace through Environment Protection Initiatives” since the year 2000. The Environment protection initiatives which are common to all Sri Lankans, irrespective of their ethnicity were used as a tool to provide a platform to mix up Sinhalese, Tamil & Muslim communities paving the way for building confidence and trust and to understand the beauty of plurality.
The home is the first school and the mother is the first teacher of a child. A study was conducted with 3 groups of mothers, old, middle aged and young through a series of interviews to study “Mothers Role” with reference to environment protection initiatives. It was revealed that the group of young mothers was not concerned about the environment and hence their children had not developed an eco-friendly habit which is quite contrary to the Sri Lankan traditions. Therefore it is felt that an immediate campaign has to be launched at grass root level with an innovative approach to change this vicious trend to mitigate the causes for environment pollution with special reference to air and water pollution.
A.M. Karunaratne, President/SCI-SL, has taken the liberty of leading the project team towards its objectives and looking after the overall project to make sure the objectives are met properly and on time.
The home is the first school and the mother is the first teacher of a child. A study was conducted with 3 groups of mothers, old, middle aged and young through a series of interviews to study “Mothers Role” with reference to environment protection initiatives. It was revealed that the group of young mothers was not concerned about the environment and hence their children had not developed an eco-friendly habit which is quite contrary to the Sri Lankan traditions. Therefore it is felt that an immediate campaign has to be launched at grass root level with an innovative approach to change this vicious trend to mitigate the causes for environment pollution with special reference to air and water pollution.
A.M. Karunaratne, President/SCI-SL, has taken the liberty of leading the project team towards its objectives and looking after the overall project to make sure the objectives are met properly and on time.
Aim
build capacity, awareness and education of young mothers to improve their competence, commitment and environment sensitiveness to play a more proactive eco friendly mothers’ role in guiding and strengthening their children from early childhood.
Objectives
- Sensitize, motivate, educate and strengthen skills of 200 young mothers living in the project area on their role as a first teacher of their children to enable them to develop eco friendly habits from early child hood.
- Raise awareness of 200 young mothers, 5000 school children and 5000 adults on global warming and associated climate changes and our contribution to mitigate them.
- Introducing modifications to the traditional kitchen and kitchen practices to reduce direct and indirect contribution for the emission of green house gases.
- Reduce emission of Methane from kitchen waste dumped along roadsides and waterways by introducing the proposed concept of “Composting Cycle” to produce bio foods for the family from bio degradable portion.
- Promote social harmony among 3 different ethnic communities through offering opportunity to mix up at the environment protection activities which are common to all irrespective of the ethnicity.
Project Sustainability
- A Community Based Organisation will be formed during the project period
- SCI-SL will continue to be involved in collaboration with the CBO until it gets strengthened
Location of the Project
