Transforming the care of children in Sri Lanka

Dear friends and supporters,

Four years ago our journey began in earnest to introduce the idea of an alternative family and foster care system to childcare services in Sri Lanka, as decades of scientific evidence prove that orphanages are harmful to a child’s development, and subject innocent children to high levels of emotional trauma and physical abuse.

We invited Hon. Chandrani Bandara MP, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Women and Child Affairs, and Marini De Livera, Chairperson National Childcare Protection Authority, to the International Foster Care Organisation Conference In Malta in the presence of President of Malta Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca to learn first hand about this unknown concept.

Michael Falcon, Minister of the Family, Children’s Rights and Social Solidarity invited us to the Ministry to discuss child rights and the growing success and challenges of foster care in Malta and around the world.

At the end of the conference, both delegates agreed that all children deserve the right to grow up in loving families, not orphanages, and asked us to assist them in writing a concept note to put forward to President Maithripala Sirisena.

On 6.3.2019 the Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal presented by Hon. Chandrani Bandara, MP and as a result the first alternative family care policy has finally been approved by the government in Sri Lanka, which is such exciting news as it now paves the way for alternative family care, careful training and implementation to change the lives of thousands of institutionalised children.

Orphanages are unwanted and unnecessary, and cannot provide the one thing that every child needs, and that is love.

Thank you for supporting our journey for change, to give every child the right to grow up in a loving family.

Kind regards,
Joel