In late 2004 a group of Australian Sri Lankan youth returned to Sri Lanka to reconnect with their heritage and understand how they could work with the community to contribute towards better development outcomes. Many in this group were young professionals educated and raised in Australia, but with a deep desire to help and work more closely in areas of education and health outcomes in Sri Lanka.
While volunteering in Sri Lanka, this group saw the unprecedented devastations experienced by many across Sri Lanka during the Boxing Day Tsunami. The group also experienced the willingness by those with so little to help others in their community who had lost everything, the generosity of Australians with no connection to Sri Lanka calling to ask how they could help the relief efforts, the fortitude of community leaders pulling together whatever resources they could find and the resilience of families through the loss of their homes and loved ones.
On returning to Australia and seeing that the urgent need for relief and humanitarian aid hadn’t dissipated even months after the Tsunami, the group organised a fundraiser called“footprints for the future” which sought to bring together other young AustralianSri Lankans and the broader Australian public and raise much needed funds for communities back in Sri Lanka. This fundraising project planted the first seeds towards the formation of an Australian based NGO called Palmera which is now an accredited agency under the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP) and continues to run sustainable programs in the country.
Palmera has now gone onto work with communities across Sri Lanka, supporting sustainable livelihoods for over 15,000 families. Establishing and growing an NGO hasn’t been an easy task, with its founder Abarna Raj noting “that getting the right volunteers, committed donors and community based staff has required perseverance and a lot of hard work but the bond held by many Australian Sri Lankans and Australians in general towards Sri Lanka and the deep passion to contribute in some form, either with skills or other resources has “lifted my spirits when the going got tough”.
Palmera has been able to learn from NGO leaders in Australia, who have supported and backed the development of research and innovative design thinking in relation to Palmera’s unique “Village to Market” model. This commenced with a partnership between Palmera, theAustralian Government (through ANCP), the Australian Philanthropist English Foundation and Australian based international development agency, Transform AidInternational. Partners saw the potential for collaboration, to share learnings from programs across Asia and to invest in the development of a comprehensive theory of change that would provide the foundations for Palmera’s current program. This supports the values of learning and collaboration that exists across many Australian- Sri Lankan relationships and a key driver behind Palmera’s success.
The trip in 2004 provided the spark that enabled a group of young Australian Sri Lankans to reassess where they would invest their skills and energy and since then has strengthened their ties and those in their extended networks to the culture, language and development environment in the country. Since 2004, many have visited Sir Lanka multiple times as tourists, NGO workers, volunteers and on family visits. Many have continued to work with us to build Palmera as it grows and expands its livelihood programs to accelerate the path to a living income, so families can stand on their own two feet.
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