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International development; a shared responsibility
Born in a rural farm family in Sri Lanka, Sumana Wijeratna became an urban planner after obtaining her first degree in geography and two post graduate diplomas in rural area planning and urban development planning. She worked 17 years in Sri Lanka holding various positions in the urban development authority in several regional cities and provinces and then moved to Vancouver, Canada in 2002. Demonstrating her ability to use her planning expertise and networking capability in the international development field, she incorporated VanLanka Planning Consulting firm and collaborated with Sustainable Cities international to work another six years in Canada as a project manager of Urban Greening program and as a project specialist in Centering Women in Reconstruction and Governance project till 2009.
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Since 2009, she began working as a freelance consultant in the sustainable development and community planning field in Canada and in Sri Lanka. She is willing to offer her practical experience and diverse range of networking capabilities that she has developed during last twenty five years in the international development field. Currently, she volunteers her time under VanLanka Community Foundation to mentor her work collogues in Canada and in Sri Lanka, advises municipal, provincial, semi government and civil society organizations in Sri Lanka on sustainability planning, community resources assessment, community education and mobilizing women and youth in establishing social enterprises.
Sumana views international development as shared and collaborative responsibility which ensures accountability and long term sustainability and yields mutual benefits rather than mere transfer of financial and technical resources from rich countries to poor. With that motivation, she initiated community fundraising activities in and around Surrey and Vancouver during 2007 – 2009, and worked in two community support education programs in Sri Lanka; one in a northern dry zone village school where Vanlanka donated two computers for the school to start a computer resources center. The other was in a mountainous rural village where Vanlanka mobilized youth group to establish learning center at a local temple premises and continue support education for children. In addition in the same village the youth group organized village community to volunteer their time to provide safe drinking water for fifteen houses with minimum support from VanLanka. Inspired by these work, she pioneered to establish the Vanlanka Community Foundation in April 2010, to further engage the larger community in BC, including the Sri Lankan Diaspora.
Sumana initiated community fundraising programs through VCF, a formally registered non-profit organization, and established a collaborative partnership with few partner organizations and expanded its work to several communities: an urban slum community in Kurunegala town and farm organization of her own village in Kurunegala district as pilot programs. The scope of the work expands to community education, food security and sustainable farming, empowerment of women and youth to promote small businesses that build on community resources.
Community Support Education Program is a long term initiative emerged through these efforts where VCF focus on developing a self-financing social enterprise. It offers quality and affordable educational support service to youth and children of regional towns in Sri Lanka and leverage its benefits to VCF project communities build their own capacity to break the poverty traps.
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Sumana's work under VCF prioritizes to promote traditional organic farming, water management in small irrigation, use of indigenous seeds among paddy farmers and encourage urban agriculture in Slum communities. This program now began in Embelegoda village in Kurunegala district where VCF initiated farmer training workshop with the Farm organization in the same village through Derana community foundation. Farmers are now planning to begin their test farm plots for the early 2011 for 'Yale' cultivation season. VCF supports Embelegoda farm organization to establish 'seed bank' and also Derana Community Foundation to install Jeewamurtha, Liquid organic fertilizer units for the first cultivation season, 2011 in their demonstration farm at Dehiatthakandiya, Ampara district in Sri Lanka. This will expand to five other villages located around Embelegoda for next season in 2011. Sumana directly work with women in her own village to encourage women groups on home gardening using organic farming methods. VCF volunteers also engage in Wilgoda slum community for promoting urban agriculture program called 'Green potting' where women start growing green vegetable in clay pots. This program has started parallel to community support education program, in order to expand the same as a city wide initiative.
VCF strategizes community education as the gateway to community economic development and plans to continue the program in its project communities with local volunteers. Canadian teachers, during the program phase will work with such volunteers. Those volunteers will engage in the community education activities during the interim phase and they will also get further learning opportunities through VCF to mobilize communities and support to poor children, women and youth in their own locality. They also will work with local municipal councils in community environment and planning and later organized as youth volunteers attached to local partners or directly as VCF volunteers. VCF plans to link all project communities with such volunteer programs to scale out its environmental planning, community mobilization, sustainable farming and small business promotion activities.
Through this programs and projects, Sumana is attempting to establish a strong and workable community collaboration to lay a clear road map for a long term commitment.
Sumana Wijeratna,
President, CEO VanLanka Community Foundation
Contact number: 604 582 3974, Email: suwije@vanLanka.com
Websites www.VanLanka.net | www.vanlanka.com
Photos Courtesy of Sumana Wijeratna.
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