15/08/2013
Tamils in Sri Lanka were suffering from ethnic conflict more than 35 years and their livelihood were significantly destroyed by civil war in year 2009. According to United Nations above 50,000 Tamil civilians were killed. And many children became orphaned, some of the population became amputees and many women became war widows.
Since most of the Tamil population lost their breadwinners, the children unable to continue their schools, they were converted and hired as child labors. Meantime the war widowed women were pushed to involve in prostitution to feed and to educate their children.
Mr. Lingam Vaithilingam is a Norwegian citizen, living in
Jakobselv, Finnmark, north of Norway and he is a Tamil man native from Jaffna peninsula located in North of Sri Lanka and he migrated Norway about 25 years ago.
He was so sad about the Tamils’ difficult situation and his heart was crying for them, and he has decided to support the war affected Tamils in any method. As a first step he has started to send a little amount of money to children orphanages in Jaffna from Norway. He has still this in practicing when he has celebrations in his home such birthdays of his children, New Year and national day.
He planned to spend 2013 summer in his born place and visited recently to Jaffna together with his wife, 2 children and his Norwegian adoptee mother. While he was enjoying his summer holiday in his, he has expanded in his aid hand toward 200 poor children.
Lingam has targeted a total of 200 students to provide stationery kit. The aid package contains 1 School bag, 6 exercise books, 1 instrument box, 1 Pen and 1 pencil.
Also he had an excellent idea in addition of a study pack provision, he added a Jackfruit plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit) together with each study pack. And the aid receiving students were requested to take care about growth of the donated plants. Also it has been estimated and being expected that more than 95% of the plants will be succeed in growth since the monsoon started in the area which enables the growth.
Jackfruit is an important fruit to the Tamils and their Hindu culture. This tree has been added to support the Ecosystem, encouraging tree plantation habit and to ensure a long term benefit to the local Tamil community.
This aid package has been estimated according to current Sri Lankan market value that 1100 LKR were spent per student and a total of 220,000 LKR was spent to support whole 200 students.
While calculating of administrative, handling, and manpower charges to accomplish this aid programme it costs about 250,000 LKR.
Among the migrated Tamil well wishers who are supporting currently to the Tamil community in a post war situation in Sri Lanka, Mr. Lingam Vaithilingam would be in the rank on top since he donated such a big amount from his own pocket as a single man and his personal aid.
Also he pointed out that he is looking into the possibilities to increase his support and promised to continue his aid in future.
To see the aid receiving children pictures, kindly refer the fan page on Facebook. And your likes will honor Mr. Lingam’s initiative and encourage other migrated Tamils to support the affected children.
I would thank you each and everybody if you could share and spread this message. Each of your shares will encourage other migrated Tamils to support the needy Tamils in North of Sri Lanka and certainly honor Mr. Lingam Vaithilingam.
