Starter Kit. Idea 368 of 500. Cluster 18
Summer schools at home for the teenagers of Sri Lankans abroad: the language, the history, the grandparents
The mechanism, from the book
1.5 million people abroad who know how rich countries work, and who send home money and little else.
The first step
Plan a 2-week programme for one summer: language classes in the mornings, visits to heritage sites and a family day with grandparents, with a named guesthouse and a price per child. Send it to three Tamil or Sinhala Saturday schools abroad and ask parents to pay a deposit. The number of deposits tells you whether to book the teachers.
- Who pays first
- Parents abroad whose teenagers cannot speak to their grandparents, who would pay for a supervised fortnight at home that starts to close the gap.
- What leaves today
- The second generation grows up with no tie to the island; a summer school builds the connection that later brings their money, skills and visits home.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a residential programme for visiting teenagers needs any registration.
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what the guesthouse kitchen must meet to feed a group of children.
Check before you spend
Insurance for minors, a safeguarding plan with checked staff, parents' written consent, and the guesthouse's permission to host a group of children.
Find out these three numbers
- What would parents abroad pay per child?
- How many deposits come from the Saturday schools?
- What do teachers and the guesthouse cost for the fortnight?
A comparison from the book
My parents in Switzerland. Chapter Eight
"They went, they saw, and they thought again"
Seeing home in person changes minds in a way that stories told abroad cannot.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.