On Thursday, Will, Abi, Joe and Laura were in Hiththatiya, a preschool built by 2008 team and it was really a happy day because we played several English games such as Bingo, Anagrams and Cross Word. Since it is during the school’s vocation, we had only afternoon activities. However, we got about 20 children involved and they were all so eager to play the English game and practice their oral English by talking with us.

It actually surprised me a lot because this was a time they could stay at home enjoying their precious one-month vocation but they just gave up this chance and instead joined our afternoon activity to improve their English and have fun at the same time.

On one hand, I am so moved by their desires of practicing English; on the other hand, I am so glad that Durham University has this Sri Lanka program which gives us a chance to provide Sri Lanka children English practicing chance so both of our team and the children take this precious chance seriously. Although sometimes I feel working with the preschool children in the villages is hard to see fast improvement, with continuation of the project, I think the impact of children’s lives will be great.

Great impact just accumulates by bit by bit “small work” and that is the reason I feel so honored to do what we are doing now because we will never know how big the impact it will be in the future.  The other thing I feel so satisfied of our project, especially Professor Joy’s arrangement is that we continuing to go to the village schools built by previous program. This arrangement makes sure that the good impacts of Sri Lanka project can be passed on.

Hope all of us can keep working on this project and make full use of this chance to help children improving their English in Sri Lanka.