Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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14 OCTOBER 2010 VOL. 4, NO. 2 LEFT: The members of the Sri Lankan summer project pose with faculty and advisors. BOTTOM: The Sri Lankan students attend a workshop in Colombo on the involvement of women in peace efforts. One student’s amorphous suggestion that they “go back to Sri Lanka and do something” became more concrete as the students petitioned AUW to support the project. The students also planned a fundraiser, surpassing their goal of 50,000 taka, and collaborated with LEADS, a Sri Lankan community development organization, to plan the trip. In May, the students headed home, where the real work began. Cleaning a graveyard. Visiting a temple. Playing cricket. As disparate as these activities may seem on the surface, they all were used as part of efforts to reach a singular and elusive goal: fostering dialogue, trust, and reconciliation between the mostly Buddhist Sinhala and mostly Hindu Tamil communities in Sri Lanka that have endured decades of mutual animosity.* Reconciling these two groups is a lofty goal, but AUW’s undergraduate Sri Lankan students learned during their Summer Project that a strong community working together has the power to heal, connect, and inspire people from any background. And in the process, they strengthened their own academic and life skills. Reconciliation, like most meaningful change, does not happen over night; much vision, planning, and hard work is involved. At AUW, the work began in September 2009, when the students attended a workshop led by Evangeline (Evan) Ekanayake, then serving as counselor and deputy director of AUW’s Health and Wellness Center. This workshop successfully defused growing tensions between AUW’s Tamil and Sinhalese students by helping them recognize their own prejudices and exchange personal stories with each other. (See AUW’s January 2010 newsletter for more information.) In true AUW fashion, the students were not content with just their own enlightenment: the Sinhalese and Tamil students wanted to share their newfound understandings that reconciliation is not only possible, but also invigorating. In the capital city of Colombo and the central city of Kandy, students met with 14 experts to discuss the war in Sri Lanka, peace and reconciliation practices, psychosocial ramifications of war, ethnic identity, Sri Lankan politics, and women’s roles in all of the above. One highlight, according to the students’ final report, occurred when economist Dr. Nishan De Mel “made us question how and why we have labels that make us believe we are different from some and similar to some.” Student Umaiyal, who is Tamil, thinks that this workshop “changed [us] the most” because they learned that identities and ethnicities are man-made cultural creations whose meanings and boundaries change over time and are far from immutable. The lesson was profound: now, Umaiyal says, “I do not feel that I have ‘Sinhala’ friends because I think that we all are from the same community.” *(A 26-year war between the government army and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ended just last year.) Moving Beyond Conflict SPREADING HOPE by Mariah Steele
SPOTLIGHT: SRI LANKA SUMMER PROJECT 15 In workshop leader Evan’s words, the Summer Project was designed “with three aspects to it: ‘head work,’ by which we mean really educating ourselves, studying about the conflict … ‘hand work,’ offering our physical labor to work with them on community development aspects … then the ‘heart work’ aspect of just being with them, listening to their stories.” The lectures and workshops provided the trip’s initial “head work” by contextualizing the war for students and giving them tools for their upcoming fieldwork. Umaiyal remembers, “I was so surprised to learn the real history of Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, because most of us did not know the basic reason for this conflict.… Previously, I thought only Tamils were struggling due to this conflict, but now I realized that both communities are affected.” Traveling farther, the students finally reached their destination in the neighboring villages of Karadipoval and Dimuthugama, Tamil and Sinhalese respectively, outside the northeast city of Trincomalee. Despite temperatures reaching 37 degrees Celsius (about 99 degrees Fahrenheit), the AUW students performed their first batch of “hand work” at a cemetery between Karadipoval and Dimuthugama—the one place both communities share. Through cleaning, sweeping, weeding, and planting flowers at the cemetery alongside people from both villages, the students “promoted unity among the divided community,” according to the final report. The second “hand work” session, which included more weeding and sweeping, took place at Dimuthugama’s Buddhist temple—a place where many of the neighboring Tamils had never been. Food, talk, and storytelling accompanied this gathering of students and villagers, fostering communication across ethnic lines. Student Kaushalya, who is Sinhalese, comments, “It is more enlightening to sit beside a Tamil girl and discuss the ethnic conflict and what we have been told than sitting along with a bunch of Sinhalese and discussing it.” More “head work” occurred as the students prepared and presented two workshops to the villagers about the importance of education. In this region of Sri Lanka, education is not a priority for many families because working children can bring in extra money. Thus, the first workshop, targeted at children, used games to show youngsters how education can help them reach their goals. The second workshop, for parents, suggested simple ways that parents can help their children’s education, even without “money, knowledge, and comforts,” as Kaushalya says. The parents’ pledges at the end of the workshop to do more for their children’s education indicated the workshops’ success. Amid all this activity, the students also managed to perform the academic projects assigned by their AUW professors. For instance, some of the students conducted household surveys in both villages about demographics and access to electricity and water. Other students collected oral histories or created a documentary about the communities. Time was also set aside for reflection: on May 19, the one-year anniversary of the ABOVE (clockwise): The Sri Lankan students lend a hand in a cemetery in the village of Dimuthugama; team members load books they purchased for Sri Lankan communities with money from their fundraising event; the Sri Lankan team on their way to speak with villagers in their homes. armed conflict’s end, the AUW group together visited a famous Hindu temple, a historic Buddhist temple, and a Catholic church. “We spent the day in religious observance to remember the fallen on both sides and pledge for a new start in the future,” Evan describes. The significance of togetherness on this day was not lost on the students, either: Kaushalya writes, “This was a good opportunity for us to appreciate each other’s differences and to embrace them, to realize what has happened in the past 30 years.” While such “heart work” happened throughout the trip, two events stand out for their unique ability to connect the two communities: a cricket match and a campfire. The cricket teams were completely mixed—Tamils and Sinhalese, villagers and AUW students, even high and low castes! The students reported that “the bitter experiences of discrimination or poverty were forgotten for an hour and we all played united, enthusiastically, and energetically.… Both Karadipoval and Dimuthugama villagers were cheering for each other, disregarding their biases and prejudices.” Similarly, on the students’ final evening, both communities organized a surprise campfire to thank the AUW group. At the gathering, villagers mingled and performed local talents. As Kaushalya describes, “We all sat around the campfire despite the darkness, mosquitoes and the cow dung on the ground. We disregarded our social status, our knowledge and our skills, and where we come from to enjoy the dancing, singing, and other performances.” The trip’s positive impact on AUW’s students has already begun to grow. Kaushalya reflects: “The Summer Project was a great opportunity to make use of all the skills we learned in class such as leadership, decision making, planning, and thinking critically.… When [the experts in Colombo] said that they were impressed with our skills and abilities, especially our sharpened critical thinking abilities, I was so glad of the decision I made in coming to AUW.” Furthermore, Umaiyal explains how the trip has changed her: “I feel like I was born again after this Summer Project with new thoughts and realizations.… I had a dream to go to the Western world after my graduation, but now I understood how badly our country needs educated people who have different perspectives. So, after this Summer Project I decided that after my studies, I will be back to Sri Lanka to serve the people.”
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Fall 2010 - Asian University for Women

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