The Sewalanka Foundation Mannar District Office is working alongside the community and with international donors, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and other local organisations to meet the communities’ changing needs.

Making sure a whole community’s involved through Village Mapping exercises in Musali Division.

This year has seen a significant transition for Mannar District Office, from undertaking relief and emergency rehabilitation projects to focusing on implementing sustainable development programs. Ms Annet Royce, Mannar District Director explains, “My office concentrates on a few communities really well, we make a commitment to a village and then take an integrated approach to development. Often we will work with different donors to meet the evolving needs of a community from providing emergency relief for resettling villages, to infrastructure rehabilitation and finally to long term activities for community development”.

Ms Royce articulates a common approach to development in a post-conflict society. As fighting subsides and communities return, basic needs must be met – like the provision of food, water and shelter – before training or income generation activities can start.

Working together

Since the cease-fire, internally displaced families (IDPs) are returning to their lands, only to experience extreme hardships. Buildings and homes are destroyed, irrigation facilities are often dysfunctional, roads impassable, large-scale unemployment prevalent and a lack of adequate health care facilities.

Thiruketheswaram village, Manthai Divison in the high security zone is an example of different donors and Sewalanka Mannar office working together to meet development needs. In mid 2004, the German Government’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) provided temporary shelter, cooking utensils, agricultural tools and chili and vegetable seeds for twelve families to resettle. Twenty families were granted permission to return but the army has permitted only twelve due to the close proximity of Mannar’s largest army base.

When asked, most families say that they are happy to have returned to their original lands as they spent most of the conflict living with relatives or friends in Mannar Town. After initial infrastructure needs were met by BMZ, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) provided funds for training, income generation activities, community-based-organisation (CBO) strengthening, pre-school building construction, roads, twenty toliets and water supply. GoSL has provided monthly dry rations and also a bus service frequents the village.

This community continues to face physical hardship as there is no water available. Water is brought in for drinking purposes and farmers continue to wait for the monsoon season so they can restart their home gardens and cultivating chillies. In addition, the community faces psychological hardship as the experiences of conflict have not faded and the strong army presence and surrounding mine fields serve as a constant reminder of war and the possible resumption of conflict.

Obstacles to development

“Some communities want to stay at the rehabilitation stage and are unable to shift to the development stage due to too many uncertainties in their lives. They are concerned about the weather and lack of water but more importantly they are concerned about the resumption of war. They are uncertain about investing their limited capital for infrastructure or investing time into cultivation if they may not see the next harvest.” as Mr Newman Peries, Coordinator explains.

Sewalanka can not create certainty; however it does recognise the need to address psychosocial issues. Also the district office includes social mobilisation as a key component of every project. That is enabling civil society participation in all project development and implementation through the strengthening of new or existing CBOs.

Mr. Rejeevan, Field Officer says “People are depressed, so if we go straight from undertaking a Participatory Rural Assessment to project implementation without proper capacity building, then people are not in the mood to help us. We have to visit the families, organise effective societies and listen to their problems and needs.”

Ms Royce further elaborates, “We spend the time to undertake strong social mobilisation, sometimes taking years to see real improvements, if we don’t do this component correctly then there is no human development only infrastructure development.”

Options available

Potting Agriculture Exhibition Day.

Sewalanka Mannar Office is also taking this opportunity of peace to support programs that look at “tertiary level” development projects; projects that meet additional needs after basic ones are met.

From 20-23 April 2004, the Mannar Office and other local NGOs financially supported the “Potting Agricultural Exhibition” organised by the Mannar Department of Agriculture that showcased different plants suitable for farming in Mannar. This event is the beginning of a larger project planned for Mannar that focuses on sustainable forms of agriculture; a personal passion of the District Director and vitally important for this dry-zone district.
In addition, Sewalanka was supported by UNICEF in August to implement a project to create awareness on children’s rights for rural development societies, preschool teachers, Grama Niladharies, alternative care centre staff and NGO front line workers in Mannar. The project will run a Train the Trainer workshop and then a series of workshops for more than 2,320 community members on a child’s right to education, to live with parents free from violence and to be protected from child labour.

The future

Of course, with 1,146 families still residing in the six welfare centres in Mannar the need for emergency rehabilitation has not diminished. Instead, by working with a variety of project partners, through building the capacity of Mannar NGOs and by looking at projects that meet more than basic needs, Sewalanka Mannar District Office is prepared for the future – a landscape at the moment that includes relief, rehabilitation and sustainable development.

>> For further information on Mannar District activities please contact:
Ms Annet Royce, District Director on 0)23 223 2702