Bridging Lanka in Mannar, Sri Lanka | Community

Bridging Lanka

Locality: Mannar, Sri Lanka

Phone: +61 403 694 132

Address: 48 Moor Street Mannar, Sri Lanka

Website: http://www.bridginglanka.org/

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• Pet service
• Non-governmental organisation (NGO)
• Animal rescue service

25.01.2022 Sri Lanka General Elections 2020 Landslide Victory for the Rajapaksas Break-away UNP group led by Premadasa won the five electorates in the city of Colombo, and the Dehiwala suburb (by just 400 votes),, but lost all the other electorates in the Colombo District and, consequently, won only 6 of the 19 seats, with 12 won by the Rajapaksas and 1 by the JVP.... Break-away UNP group also lost Kandy District, Nuwara Eliya District and Gampaha District, amongst others. UNP did not win a single seat, but was allocated one National List seat National Results Parties Votes % Seats +/- Districts National Total Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna [Rajapakses] 6.85 million 59% Elected Seats 128 National List Seats 17 Total Number of Seats 145 Samagi Jana Balawegaya [Premadasa] 2.8 million 24% Elected Seats 47 National List Seats 7 Total Number of Seats 54 Jathika Jana Balawegaya [JVP] .45 million 3.85% Elected Seats 2 National List Seats 1 Total Number of Seats 3 Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi [Tamil National Alliance] .33 million 2.8% Elected Seats 9 National List Seats 1 Total Number of Seats 10 United National Party [Ranil] ,25 million 2.15% Elected Seats 0 National List Seats 1 Total Number of Seats 1 Others .95 million Elected Seats 10 National List Seats 2 Total Number of Seats 12 Total Elected Seats 196 National List Seats 29 Total Number of Seats 225

25.01.2022 Let's put the pressure on to stop unscrupulous proposed mineral sand mining on Mannar Island otherwise it will be gone forever!

24.01.2022 Give an early Christmas present to a young person in Sri Lanka through our Touching Hearts Lending Hands campaign. Lack of education, poor job prospects, ever increasing costs of living and the pandemic have created dire conditions, with many young people at their tipping point. By donating now you will be directly supporting a small group of young women and men to overcome their internal and external barriers to achieve their life goals. Learn more and donate here: https://chuffed.org/project/touchingheartslendinghands

24.01.2022 Let's embrace solidarity.

20.01.2022 A chance visit by Black Beard Travels to meet us in Kunchukulam. All our boys wanted beards like this! Jeremy was interviewed for a donkey story.

20.01.2022 Bridging Lanka has been committed to the people and place of Mannar northern Sri Lanka for the past 11 years. Imagine our shock when Australian mining company, Titanium Sands Ltd plan to mine the island affected thousands of people and destroying the environment. Please sign this petition to save Mannar Island.

19.01.2022 Fighting Fit! Join us in building a gym and a healthy culture for 'at risk' young people in northern Sri Lanka Bridging Lanka is a tax deductible charity in Australia for donations over $2....Continue reading

19.01.2022 Is similar happening in Sri Lanka where the majority is in fear of its minorities? Unrest and rioting in cities in throughout the United States, the world’s largest economy and one of its richest, have been going on now for a week. Protests have taken place in at least 75 cities and have reached the gates of the White House. The immediate cause for these riots was the killing of an African American man by a white police officer in an especially brutal way by keeping a knee on... his neck. This killing was filmed as it was happening in public on the roadside and showed other police officers looking on while people passing by plead with the police to get off the dying man. The scale of the public agitation and violence hark back to the late 1960s and the imposition of curfews has been reported to be more than at any time since the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. American society was able to overcome that setback because that was a time of progress. There was hope in the air. The civil rights laws had been passed that gave equal rights to all. Affirmative action policies were being put in place that enabled people from disadvantaged communities to get places in universities and better jobs. Not any more. The fears of the white majority have been mobilised to fear the other communities with whom they have minimum engagement. Law enforcement are suspecting that outside elements from both far-right and far-left groups are playing a significant role in the unrest that has spread to cities all over the US. The parallels to Sri Lanka can be seen during time of riots when community members turn to violent action instigated by people who come in from outside. There are lessons for us in Sri Lanka from the ongoing events in the United States. (Jehan Perera)

18.01.2022 Fighting Fit...Sri Lanka style Join us in building a gym and a healthy culture for 'at risk' young people in northern Sri Lanka to Donate please click on below url:... https://chuffed.org/project/fighting-fit Bridging Lanka is a tax deductible charity in Australia for donations over $2.

18.01.2022 We are excited! The Australian Government has just approved funding for the many programs we want to conduct out of the fighting fit gym after the building is completed. The funds will create: Yoga and dance training classes for young women so they can be yoga and dance trainers at the gym Accredited fitness training for young men so they can be the gym's personal trainers... A nine-module youth wellbeing program covering topics including reducing social media use, eating nutritious food and getting more sleep Training of youth peer counsellors to support young people through 'love failure', episodes of anger and violence, addictions and suicidal feelings Parent effectiveness training and support groups to improve parent-children relations Please help us complete building the gym so we can start these important programs. You will be making a difference to hundreds of young people in Mannar facing challenging times. To donate please click on the link: https://chuffed.org/project/fighting-fit Please share and like to spread this indispensable project

17.01.2022 Her Excellency Victoria Coakley, spent time with some of our cooks and cafe staff at Cafe Arokkiya during her Mannar visit. Her Excellency was warm, supportive and entirely 'down to earth' in the best of Australian tradition!

16.01.2022 One of the intended outcomes of the Covid plandemic - a removal of thousands of jobs we all did being replaced by robot and AI inspired gadgets.

15.01.2022 She's Back! Sulaika, one of Cafe Arokkiya's star performers and kitchen manager, left us in October last year. There were some issues in the kitchen and she departed unexpectedly. We were devastated. Sulaika represented the heart and soul of our new widows' livelihood project - a women managed commercial kitchen and cafe. After six months we visited her to ask whether she would consider returning. In that time she had reflected, she had grown. Cafe Arokkiya was still in her heart. We are so pleased she's back.

12.01.2022 My first vote in Sri Lanka! To show you have voted they paint your little pinky, black. It was an amazing feeling to exercise my right to vote!

11.01.2022 An Australian Company Poised to Destroy Mannar Island? Is an Australian-based company really serious about undertaking significant sand mining operations on Mannar Island which is already below sea level and vulnerable to sea level rising? No locals know about this. This will certainly not benefit locals or the environment. A smooth-talking CEO can gloss over the ramifications of this money-making venture but local people are set to suffer. https://www.youtube.com/watch

11.01.2022 Kavi, Hindhujan and Eric take time out from their Advanced Level study schedule to practise one of their original compositions. Talent oozes out of these boys who recently formed a band, Monaki. Their music is sophisticated and passionate. Soon they will be composing songs with a reconciliation theme for our work with Sinhala and Muslim young people in Digana, Kandy. After their A level exams in October, they will start up their Friday night Eats & Beats live music show at Cafe Arokkiya. Can't wait!

10.01.2022 Check out this donkey video by Black Beard Travels! https://www.instagram.com/p/CGPbBiGpviL/ Thanks BBT. Apprecaite your visit to Kunchukulam and the Donkey Clinic in Thailankudiyiruppu.

10.01.2022 We are battling on many environmental fronts in Mannar. Unique and vulnerable eco-systems are under threat and most of the residents here are not even aware of these. Help us protect our natural habitats in Mannar... Please read on...

10.01.2022 New York Governor calls for a ban on choke-holds by law enforcement agencies in America. The reason why Americans are up in arms is because George Floyd is not the first but the latest in a long line of African Americans who have been killed by choke-holds while in police custody.

10.01.2022 Are you a budding photographer who cares about a peaceful future? Then enter this competition - https://www.facebook.com/740832502949326/posts/1243489432683628/

08.01.2022 Dedicated to all those in Mannar who take their own lives ... as occurred early this morning. But this is addressed to those who were considered friends but perhaps due to the superficiality of that relationship simply avoided the profound task of being truly human, sharing deeply and reaching out. A person’s suicide often takes the people it leaves behind by surprise. If you knew the person well enough and close enough, and you still possess normal human emotions, you are b...ound to experience some faint traces of a survivor’s guilt for failing to see it coming. In his first essay An Absurd Reasoning Albert Camus, the famous French author and philosopher, opens with these extreme lines. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." Meet heart to heart so that this fundamental question is answered with a life worth the living.

07.01.2022 Mannar People Remain Ignorant of Sand Mining Threat The Mannar community is usually the last to find out what is happening in Mannar. Did you know that large areas of Mannar Island will be mined for titanium sands for export? Exploration started last year and drilling tests have already commenced in many parts. An international company will make the profit but leave the people of Mannar sinking into the sea. Titanium Sands Limited is focused on defining and developing high gr...ade, high value and easily minable heavy mineral sands deposits. The Company has entered into an agreement with Srinel Holdings Ltd to acquire a high grade ilmenite-leucoxene project on Mannar Island in north west Sri Lanka on which ongoing drilling is expanding resources and reserves that can be brought rapidly into production with modest capital requirements. Covid19 has temporarily delayed their plans but soon they will recommence their mining operation. Much of Mannar Island is already below sea level. Sand mining is illegal for locals but international companies can come and do what they want! How can we fight this...at least to start with being better informed?

03.01.2022 What more can be said...

02.01.2022 We were honoured to be visited by the Australian Deputy High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Victoria Coakley, and Senior Program Officer Suthan. Her Excellency was briefed on our newest initiative, Fighting Fit, met the Arokkiya Cafe women and toured our mini gym. We are extremely grateful for the support of the Australian government of a number of our projects.

02.01.2022 In early July 2020 the International Labour Organisation said that the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the loss of at least 305 million jobs, with the impact slowly but surely striking the Americas. This is a conservative figure; a more radical number is that half of working-age people are without adequate income. The ILO writes that, in terms of work, the virus ‘has hit the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the hardest and cruellest way, so exposing the devastating cons...equences of inequalities’. Two billion workers are in the informal economy (six out of ten working people); of them, the ILO report notes, 1.6 billion ‘face an imminent threat to their livelihoods as average income in the informal economy shrank by 60% in the first month of the pandemic. That has brought a dramatic increase in poverty, and the warning from the World Food Programme in April that the next pandemic could be a pandemic of hunger’, To protect the economy is another way of saying to protect the idea of private property. There are hungry people, and there is food, and yet the food is not delivered to the hungry because they do not have money and because food is treated as a commodity rather than a right. Governments prefer to use social wealth to hire military and police forces to keep the people away from the food, a sure sign that the system has a desiccated soul. Our dossier, although based on material from Latin America, raises deep questions about the exhaustion of the global capitalist system in a time of great human suffering; neither neofascist nor neoliberal governments, which uphold the capitalist logic of property over human needs, are capable of managing the scale of the human catastrophe that they in part created. It is impossible to imagine that the miserable situation now will not be overturned by the capacity of human beings to find ways to gather together and transform our reality. This is not something theoretical. Already our popular movements are forging ways to provide relief and to push for alternative futures. The rot exposed by the pandemic augurs a future that is frightening. That is, unless we decide to take it into our hands to shape the world that we want to live in. Excerpts from Here Not Death but the Future Is Frightening: The Twenty-Eighth Newsletter (2020), Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

01.01.2022 The Collapse of the Broad Stripes and Bright Stars The United States of America was founded on principles of equality, justice, and freedom on July 4th, 1776. However, it was also founded by white slave-owners who intentionally created a government with discriminatory laws and practices to ensure that they could continue to maintain racial superiority. After amendments to the U.S. constitution and centuries of struggle, which included a bloody civil war and a powerful civil r...ights movement, the effects of the institutional racism this country was founded upon are still very apparent in modern-day America. With the country in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (which has led to over 100,000 deaths so far) and nation-wide protests sparked by the brutal police killing of a middle-aged black man named George Floyd, the U.S. seems to be falling apart at the seams. And what these seams are revealing is the reality for many African-Americans in this country: poor health due to their fears of racism and poor access to healthcare to deal with these problems. In fact, it has become such a big problem that American government officials and healthcare boards are pushing for racism to be declared a public health emergency. Cities in Minnesota and Ohio are asking for racism to be treated as a health risk, while the American Association of Family Physicians, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Paediatrics reached out to the public to denounce racism and police violence in America (CNN). The American Academy of Paediatrics even mentioned that racism has been linked to birth disparities and mental health problems in children. African-American children are taught self-defence behaviours to protect themselves from police brutality from a young age and have to consistently monitor how they behave in public. Excerpts of an article by Minoli Ediriweera, A Sri Lankan heritage high school student in Maryland, USA, who is aspiring towards a medical science career.

01.01.2022 Bridging Lanka - responding to the street dog issue in Mannar where thousands of canines present rabies and dog bite challenges for locals.