Sisterhood of the Traveling Pandas: Jaclyn's Sri Lankan Experience

Our sister Jaclyn had the amazing chance to spend the summer in Sri Lanka and writes about the experience here:

"This summer I had the opportunity to do a volunteer service learning trip to Sri Lanka. One of my professors, Sriyani Tidball, founded a non-profit organization in the slum beaches of Dehiwela 32 years ago, called Community Concerns. I would like to do International Human Rights Law in the future, so Sriyani insisted I volunteer at Community Concerns during the summer. I jumped at the opportunity and here I am a year later in Sri Lanka. A Nebraska Chi Omega, Elise Polly, is volunteering with me in Sri Lanka as well.

Community Concerns has too many projects to keep track of so I'll share a little bit about two projects I have worked with. Salvage Jewelry is a company that makes jewelry out of recycled materials like kite surfing fabric, magazines, newspapers, and scrap leather. All of the jewelry is made by women that cannot afford to leave their homes because they have to take care of children. Salvage Jewelry allows them to make jewelry at home and get paid per bead or per piece they make. I help several days a week in their main office making tags, cards, and cutting paper for the women to make beads out of.

The next project I work with is the Baby Clinic, where I help every Wednesday. The Baby Clinic helps around 80 moms, 5 dads, and over 80 children each week. Most of these women have been abused, left by their husbands or widowed.

Each week the women are given a lesson and this past week was my turn to give the lesson. My lesson was on women and children's rights. Because of the culture here in Sri Lanka, their rights are different. I worked with Punesh, the woman who runs the Baby Clinic, in order to understand their culture and their rights, but still empower these women and give them a sense of what rights they do have. Most of them did not even know about many of the rights that I had presented. After the lessons each week, we hand out a snack for the child, like powdered milk and a bar of soup or vitamins.  Being able to educate these women has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in Sri Lanka.

 Along with these projects, there is also a child sponsorship program (I am now a sponsor of a boy who is going into University), an elders program, a drug rehab center for men, a safe house for abused and trafficked women, a Montessori school, a primary school, and an after school program. I have worked with every single one of these projects and can't even begin to describe how Community Concerns has changed so many lives.

On the weekends I get to travel and see more of Sri Lanka. My first stop was to the cultural triangle in the middle of Sri Lanka to learn about the history of the island. The next was to Arugam Bay which is one of the top surfing places in the world and yes, I did surf. I also traveled to Kandy and Nuwara Eliya which are two quant little towns. Then to climb Adam's Peak, which is the second tallest mountain in Sri Lanka! You climb 5,000 steps that are as tall as your knees, and the mountain is sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.

Jaclyn made it to the top of Adam's Peak, a sacred mountain for Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.

Throughout this experience I have learned a lot about myself and other cultures. It has been such an amazing experience and I hope I get to come back in years to come. I can't wait to home to my AOII girls, but will truly miss Sri Lanka and the amazing people I have met.