Uplifting Puthiyanagar: A Village In Need

A remote village in the Mullaithivu District, in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, Puthiyanagar is home to over 80 families, whose primary livelihood is farming, animal husbandry and manual labour. The Puthiyanagar villagers live with constant hardship, with no school in the area and only one bus to connect them to neighboring villages. One of the most impoverished areas in the country, their homes had no electricity or running water, the only available source of clean water being the village wells, which dried up during the dry season.

Access to Water

‘We have been struggling a lot in the past without enough drinking water in our village. During the dry season most of our village wells dry up, we need to manage the little amount of water which was available for all our needs. Due to this, we couldn’t continue our farming which is one of our main modes of income.’ – said a village leader of Puthiyanagar at an opening of a well facilitated by the Foundation of Goodness.

Access to clean water is a fundamental human right. To address this issue, and afford the villagers of Puthiyanagar water throughout the year 05 wells were renovated and handed over to the village by FoG recently. The capacity of the wells were expanded and strengthened to ensure continued water supply. These wells supply water to over 370 beneficiaries in the areas, who now have access to clean drinking water within their own village.

Speaking of the new wells, another Puthiyanagar villager said, ‘Now we have more water in our wells, which means we won’t struggle anymore during the dry season.’

A big thank you goes out to our donors Suri and Rushika who made this amazing project possible, and in doing so gave an entire village access to water which is such a basic human right and an essential necessity.

The Foundation of Goodness is also committed to further development of the village to uplift their standard of life.

A space for learning

In order to uplift the community and provide this underserved village resources that would benefit the next generation, FoG undertook a project to furnish and stock-up the local library. Through, the kind donation of books and furniture from a group of Australians, the library was fully stocked and transformed into a haven of learning. The building has become a centre of activity for the children of the area as they flocked to read their new books!

A Solar Village

Hearing of the lack of electricity in Puthiyanagar, the Association of Professionals Sri Lanka, United Kingdom stepped up to install Solar Panels on the roof of the Community Centre to generate electricity to the villagers. A 6kW energy supply has been provide to the village. The second phase of the project is working to connected to the National Grid under the Net Plus system and to enable the income generated from the surplus electricity to be used by the village committee for their future development

‘I only hope one day we can make this village a kind of benchmark from all angles, for others to join in to make our villages better than it used to be.’ said Kushil Gunasekera, Founder and Chief Trustee of the Foundation of Goodness reflecting on the work being done in the village of Puthiyanagar to empower and uplift the lives of this underserved community.