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Peter Wise is a Sri Lankan man with a very un-Sri Lankan name and some very un-Sri Lankan attitudes. The army veteran and experienced survey engineer splits his time between a full-time job in Colombo and Forests for People (FfP), his personal crusade to deliver clean and reliable water supplies to poor subsistence communities in Sri Lanka.
Lower Uva Province, FfP operates as a diverse collective, ranging from professional engineers and businessmen in Colombo and beyond to farmers and postmen from the areas in need of FfP’s aid. Focusing on the provision of hygienic water for drinking and reliable irrigation reservoirs for farming, the charitable trust established in 1990, uses a combination of modern technologies and ancient traditions to achieve this goal with surprising efficiency. Between 1996 and 2001 FfP helped local families create over 200 drinking water wells across the Tanamalwila, Wellawaya and Hambantota Districts, and completed the restoration of Bogaha and Uruhoray Wewas.
The name Forests for People doesn’t initially seem to correlate with an organization whose main activities include repairing ancient irrigation dams (wewas) and helping local people secure drinking water wells, but FfP has more strings to it’s bow than these engineering projects which have become something of a speciality. In 1987 the fledgling organization started a tree survey sponsored by the British High Commission (BHC) in Colombo to determine what sort of trees could be used in farmers’ homegardens as a means of revegetation and income supplementation. With money from the BHC and a Swiss charity called Helvetas the programme continued throughout the 1990s and by the end of the decade over 160,000 seedlings had been cultivated by a network of nurseries established to support the project.
Simply planting trees haphazardly has limited benefit to the environment or farmers however, and recognizing this FfP have worked had to educate farmers of the benefits having trees in their homegardens will bring. A combination of cash crops and trees in either ‘alley cropping’ or chena cultivation reaps rewards in both the short and long term, with reduced soil erosion, better moisture retention and an occasional timber crop that provides a valuable bonus income for these people living in one of the poorest parts of Sri Lanka, which became a focus for People Revolutionary Front (Sinhala Marxist) terrorist activity in the mid-1980s. Since then the area has been hit extremely hard by the droughts of 2001 and 2002, while a limited water supply and poor sanitation facilities make life very hard for people here. Only 20% of Monaragala District residents have access to clean water, while the national average for rural areas is 65%. To compound the problem over three-quarters of the populace do not have water-sealed latrines, so contamination of water supplies is an endemic problem.
The biggest hurdles obstructing the work of FfP are, as always with charitable work, a shortage of finance. The NGO had originally planned to restore one wewa each year, but since work started on Bogahawewa in 1994 only two of these rainwater reservoirs have been completed, with work on the third, Watagala wewa, suspended because of a lack of funds. As Peter Wise explains, FfP is forced to rely on investment from foreign aid agencies and charities because there is no alternative. “Our main funding comes from sympathetic European countries and in some cases, individuals who’ve made large personal donations. While the local government and Health Secretariat are both supportive of our work, they don’t make any contribution financially.”
The problems of sharing limited resources between a number of well projects, wewa restorations and the ongoing tree-planting process, leave FfP with an uncertain future. While some parts of the work can almost take care of themselves (seeds are collected from planted trees to provide future nursery stock), other parts require significant investment of both time and capital. In some instances it’s merely a case of giving a farmer a bag of cement and use of the moulds and tripod required to cast and sink well rings and secure his family’s drinking water supply. In others FfP need to use a mechanical digger, paid for by donations from a Dutch charity, so the budget has to take into consideration fuel costs and so on.
While even a donation of a few hundred rupees makes a difference, for wewa restorations to happen on a regular basis requires much greater endowments. Forests for People expertly combine foreign aid with local expertise and labour, but with more support from generous investors here the organisation could become an example of how Sri Lankan people can co-operate in a very un-Sri Lankan way and make a real difference, not only to the lives but also to the attitudes of their compatriots.
For more information visit www.forestsforpeople.org
or contact : Mr. Peter Wise on 2 500 999 or 2 598 255.