Watching him study is a dream come true for Subhashini (25) his mother. Nothing makes her happier than to see him with his books. “My favourite subject is math,” Pavithran smiles shyly as he turns page after page covered with sums he has completed.
Growing up at the heart of war, education was not a choice for children in Kilinochchi; survival was. As the war became intense education slipped further away from them into a blurry dream. “Schooling was interrupted all the time,” says Subhashini who was in school at that time, “We all had a thirst to study and just like other children we had dreams. I wanted to become a Math teacher.”
Even with roofs damaged by shelling and bullet-holes in the walls children went to school whenever possible until the schools were too damaged to function or had to house displaced families. But there was also another reason why children in Kilinochchi stopped schooling.
They had to get married to avoid recruitment into the armed group. Subhashini (then 16) made the same choice. Subhashini could never imagine Pavithran or any child in her village would ever know education for she didn’t know if anyone would survive the brutal war. But her family survived and many others did too. Though they were broken and traumatized, they returned ‘home’ to rebuild their lives right from the beginning.
World Vision together with other organizations and the government supported their return and assisted them through the resettlement and rehabilitation, catering to their immediate needs. “World Vision provided us with goats to support livelihood recovery and I trust I will be able to get a stable income from it,” she said.
Today, the young mother of two is hopeful once again. “My only dream is to see my children have a good education and be able to achieve their dreams. Education is becoming expensive for us and it will become more difficult to afford when my two-year old also starts with preschool. I am hopeful World Vision would support my children’s education,” she beams.
“I feel very proud and happy when I go through my son’s school books,” smiles Subhashini, “I can see that he excels in Math. That was my favourite subject too.” Helping children return to school was a priority for World Vision and immediate action was taken to renovate and rebuild their damaged school buildings providing them a safe place to study once again.
While World Vision’s work in Kilinochchi is moving from relief mode to an Area Rehabilitation Programme, there will be a lot more work to help children continue schooling and catch up on the studies they missed.
Hopefully Pavithran and his brother or any child in Kilinochchi will never have a reason to give up schooling.
(World Vision Lanka Newsletter - Kathika)
