Young man from Kegalle talking about making friends across the island.
Sri Lanka Unites is doing a bus tour around Sri Lanka, visiting schools, connecting kids, doing reconciliation. Much respect to Prashan De Visser and the team. They’ve covered Colombo, Kandy, Kurunegala, Nuwara Eliya and Ratnapura. The next leg begins on October 23rd. They’ve started posting video of students talking about reconciliation. Really worth a watch.
Ashan from Trinity College
Student from Hindu College Colombo. Uncaptioned Tamil, but I dig the kid in the background at 0:06
What’s beautiful about what Sri Lanka Unites is doing is that it’s so simple. Difficult and complicated to do, but simple in its final application. Kids are basically making friends with kids from other parts of the island. Before the war sports and scouts and stuff sorta did this, but it needs a bit of a kick start. It’s actually much more effective than any top-down political solution or even political devolution. These are kids making friends with other kids and actually uniting as people, not political parties or voters. Just people.
I was especially encouraged by the young man from Kegalle who said his new Tamil friends visited for local New Year and that they were visiting in December. I was also struck that Ashan from Trinity said not only did his mind change, he changed his mothers. That’s how change generally works, especially change of the heart. From the youth, from the ground, a few young people at a time. Sri Lanka Unites is doing great work, please like them on Facebook. You can also follow their blog.
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