email from Tissa

Dear Nana!
I wish I could take credit for everything you have mentioned! That said, it is huge pleasure to be a part of larger enterprise to help the students. I follow events in Sri Lanka quite closely as I am sure you do as well and I am offended by the sheer waste of public resources to satisfy the egos of politicians. I remember a time when only ministers (and there were very few then) who had official cars. Now every MP has a fleet of them.
In fact on the day I left after the reunion, I missed my connection in Singapore because the President had taken a plane to go to Kiev during the previous week (with an entourage of almost 100 people) and that had ruined the Sri Lankan airlines schedule and a whole bunch of us had to spend a lot of time at various airports as a result. In the great scheme of things, this wasn't much but what is happening to students and the absence of resources to help their basic educational needs is another symptom of the same disease.
When you make these awards, you should give them the widest possible publicity and hopefully it will encourage other Colombo grads working in Sri Lanka to make small donations to the fund as well. A thousand Rs isn't much these days for people who do private practice and a 250 doctors could easily cover a scholarship. There are so many Colombo grads working in the States and we should make an appeal for $10.00 from each one (this amount will barely buy 3 gallons of petrol) and it will be money well spent. I have a tax deductible charity that I use for various other charitable donations in Sri lanka and it has worked quite well in the past. But a 10 dollar donation won't even qualify for a tax donation! I could quite easily use my Pay Pal account to collect the funds. That would keep the administrative costs to practically zero.
All the best,
Tissa