By: Uadaya Sivakumar
Emerge Lanka
Financial Officer
Since I have joined Emerge Lanka recently, many of my friends were interested in getting to know more about my new organization. When I tell them about what Emerge Lanka does and the challenges faced by our girls and their present situation, many of them felt like doing something for these girls. As a result of this, my friends joined with me to collect stuff for the girls.
We decided to collect and distribute these things during December, since it is a festival session. We believed everyone would be in a “giving mood,” so we could collect more stuff for our girls.
As we believed, we were able to collect more than 600 pieces of clothes which are good looking and trendy. One of my friends owns a beauty parlor and she donated more than 120 pieces of new fashionable jewelry to the girls, with those and also some other girls’ donations, I was able to make 80 little jewelry kits for the girls.
Friends, who are married and have children, donated dresses and new toys for kids. In addition to these, we were able to collect 11,000/- as a cash donation. Using that money, we were able to buy sanitary packets and soaps for the girls and candies, toys, and coloring books for the kids.
Almost everyone in my friend’s circle helped me with collection and packing. A few of them provided free transport to collect the stuff from different places, and everyone willingly dedicated their precious time to this event.
On December 28, 2012, we went to Salvation Army and distributed all these stuff with the help of Nirukshi. The girls were very much excited about the trendy jewelry; I think they did not expect this kind of a gift from us. The kids were excited with their “Toy Pack,” which had one piece of candy, a coloring book, and a new toy. Since there are more “Toy Packs,” we asked the kids to select one pack as they wished.
Each of my friends felt that, they had spent a momentous day in their lives. Many of them are willing to continue this connection with our girls; therefore, I am approaching them to be mentors for these girls.