History - Historie
The tragic reason that caused the start of the Senehasa project is the seaquake right before the shore of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which took place on December 26th, 2004. It was one of the heaviest seaquakes since 1900. De consequences are well known. The seaquake caused an enormous tsunami and the world was confronted with the horrible consequences of this unleashed mass of water. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. The victims of this huge disaster will have to live with the consequences for many more years. Sri Lanka is one of those countries that were severely struck by the tsunami.
Many children lost their parents, but many parents lost their children as well. In a third world country the loss of children is not only an emotional tragedy for the parents, but it also means that they have no one to provide for them when they get too old to take care of themselves. In many of these third world countries there are no proper social services, like pensions, which means that elderly people are very dependent of the help and support of their children.
The Board of Directors and Employees of the Sevagram foundation (a health- and care institution in Limburg) are very concerned about this situation. Through one of its employees (Anja Sijstermans) there was a connection with the village of Baddegama, near the city of Galle in the South-West of Sri Lanka. She is a member of the board of the Van der Looij Welfare Foundation. She was present at the time of the tsunami and had to face it all. This Welfare Foundation is a Dutch initiative and supports the local monks in running a school and providing education. (www.projectsrilanka.nl)
Through this foundation contacts were made by Sevagram and the initiative was born to set up a small nursing home for elderly people in Baddegama. In the past few years a lot of work has been done and numerous activities have been organized, all with the same goal: fundraising. Partly thanks to the effort of a great amount of employees and volunteers of Sevagram and amazing involvement of the Vebego Foundation, an elderly home, consisting of four care homes and a main building, could be set up on November 24th, 2009. For the Board of Directors Sevagram, the project therefore was completed.
However, a few directly involved (former)employees and volunteers of Sevagram are convinced that support from the Netherlands is still necessary. They have joined together, and to further support the care center of Senehasa with the start and further running of schools. They unified themselves in the foundation of Senehasa, which now is independent of the Sevagram Foundation.
