Rilhena

Rilhena lies in the foothills of the mountains, amidst the tea plantations which took away the ancestral village lands. About 100 families live there, cultivating rice. Over half are landless and a similar number live in temporary dwellings made of mud and thatched with coconut leaves.

In 1983 a worker from the Sarvodaya district centre visited Rilhena at the invitation of some villagers. Kanthi, a young mother who is the live-wire of the village's Sarvodaya Society, says, 'We had waited for three years for the government to deliver on its promise to supply us with clean drinking water. But we realized our power was not in Colombo, it had to be with us.'

The villagers discussed the idea of holding a shramadana (sharing) work-camp. Drinking water was their priority, as the water course near Rilhena was contaminated by the villages upstream.

The village people helped to sink tube wells, supplied by a foreign donor. In the process the villagers learnt how to maintain the wells in the future. As Harsha, a Sarvodaya organizer, puts it, 'Let them see first and listen second. Our philosophy is better understood in a shramadana than in a speech. After that we can talk.'

The two-day work-camp strengthened the bonds of community between the participants. One village grandmother was surprised and delighted when Sarath, a university-educated Sarvodaya field-worker, called her Amma (mother).

Following this psychological infrastructure building, Sarvodaya went on to build up the social infrastructure of the village. The people of Rilhena - like most of Sri Lanka's villagers - are sharply divided by caste, class and political party. So Sarvodaya has worked to bring people together in umbrella groups of mothers, farmers, children, youth and elders.

Rilhena's Mothers' Group is very active. They persuaded the villagers to hold a shramadana camp and build a pre-school. They give the pre-school children a daily meal of milk, cereals and fruit, with the help of a monthly allocation of Rsl,000 (GBP20) from a foreign-sponsored food aid scheme. The pre-school teacher underwent a three-month training course at the Sarvodaya district centre and works unpaid.

Once the village groups are functioning, Sarvodaya encourages them to register themselves selves with the government as legally incorporated societies which can own land, obtain loans and start up economic enterprises. Sarvodaya provides support for these.

Among other enterprises, Rilhena has started processing cashew nuts. Kanthi has obtained a loan of Rs5,000 (GBP100) from the village Sarvodaya Society. She is confident that by the end of 10 months she can make a profit of Rs6,500, after repaying the loan with interest. 'If we are given a chance we can develop ourselves,' she says.