Latest News

Sep

2011

The Carbon Game

Educating children about carbon emissions, conservation and mitigation.

Community Friends has started a pilot program in Oregon schools to teach children about carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere and ways they can help through conservation, mitigation and education. The Carbon Game is a fun way for students to learn more about climate change and the important task of measuring carbon emissions.

Students learn about renewable energy using
donated solar cells from Choice Solar.

How:

The game takes place in the classroom or a school’s green/eco club. It includes these steps:

1. Understanding carbon concentrations in the atmosphere using data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

2. Students count their households’ car miles, air miles, natural gas and electricity bill for one period. At the end of the period, the entire classroom’s carbon footprint is totaled in pounds of CO2.

3. Understanding the methods to lower carbon concentrations: conservation, renewable energy, and carbon mitigation. Small demonstration solar panels are donated to classrooms.

4. Students pledge to educate 5 people outside of their household. Students can also set a goal to help mitigate the classroom’s carbon footprint by selling carbon offsets as an option through a fundraiser.

Over time as the game gathers data from classrooms around the country as well as classrooms in other countries, this data can be shared and graphed for comparison as part of the game. Two classes from different schools in different countries can do the game together.

Community Friends educates students with
classroom presentations.

Why:

We believe that educating the next generation about CO2 concentrations, conservation and mitigation is one of the greatest impacts we can have in our work. During the 2010/11 school year we educated 100 Oregon students in our first pilot program. The success of the program inspired Community Friends to partner with other educators and develop a model that can be offered nationally as well as internationally.

Students use balloons to
visualize one pound of CO2

Fundraising Goal:

Our goal for the 2011/12 school year is to educate 500 students. The cost per student, including the mitigation of the CO2 measured by students, is about $27 per child. We are hoping to raise $14,000 to cover the costs of 500 students. All donations are tax deductible.

100 Students = $2,700
10 Students = $270
5 Students = $135
1 Student = $27

Please donate and help us reach our goal. All donations are tax deductible. Please share with others. Thanks!

Sep

2011

This post is the last in our six-part series with John Ainger. John spent the first months of the year as an intern with Community Friends studying micro-enterprise and ecological economics in Portland, Oregon and Sri Lanka. He is now beginning his college career at University of Sussex in England.

Jeewa a naturally early bird gets up at 5:30, and wakes me up at what I consider midnight but actually 6 o’clock. The sunrise is truly astonishing, though for the locals it is just another start to the day.

It was quite sad for me leaving the beautiful place and people of Waitalawa and Ulla behind. For me, I felt perhaps that I had not fully grasped what day-to-day life meant here during my brief stay on the island of Sri Lanka. I had merely a small snapshot. I had come away thinking however, that these people were far more sustainable than we in the West are and that they were far more ‘local’ in their economics. It is nice to see that there are still a few places where the tentacles of globalisation have not yet reached. These people do not lead a ‘Western’ lifestyle but with a little help I believe they will be the happier for it.

While Community Friends are helping them, they can also teach us. Jeewa was sad to leave as I think he feels a real bond with these people. Over the course of our stay it had emerged that he was born and raised on a tea plantation so he felt a great deal of empathy.

Today I also walked along the train tracks to the 9 arches bridge-a colonially built bridge and I must say very impressive. The walk though is a killer; it’s a three hour round trip and my ankle is unfortunately feeling a bit the worse for wear. The trains are one of the few benefits I think my ancestors brought to Sri Lanka: the trains, the English language and cricket. As a bit of light relief after my walk I watch the world cup final with the locals, which is great fun, even though Sri Lanka lose to their neighbour and fierce rival, India. For my American audience cricket is a superior form of baseball!

My last big adventure before departing this island was to climb to the top of it. Needless to say it was absolutely pitch black when I exited my hotel (in Delhousie) at 2:45 am to start my ascent of Big Adam. I was thankful that in my still sleepy state, the route up Adam was lit and fairly easy to follow. It was just a question of whether my legs would survive the 5200 steps I would have to climb.

I was accompanied on my climb by several hundred Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims making their way up as well as the odd fellow tourist. Adam’s Peak is named as it is believed by Christians to be the place where Adam first stepped after being cast from heaven. Buddhists often call it ‘Sri Pada’ which means sacred footprint as it is where they believe Buddha left it on his way to paradise whilst Hindus believe the footprint is that of Lord Shiva’s.

I was among the first of the tourists to the top (many of the pilgrims had spent the night up there) and was chuffed with a climbing time of 1 hour 45. My quick time did mean however that I was waiting at the top in the freezing cold and wind before the sunrise. Boy, was it worth the wait. The sun comes up very quickly, but Adam casts a magnificent shadow behind him. The orange glow of the early sun and the Buddhist chants makes the whole experience feel very pure, like you could be there 500 years before. It’s mesmerising. The trek down is a killer-as they say, ‘You’re a fool not climb Adam’s Peak once, but a damn fool to do it again’. Very wise words.

No time for a nap as I reached the bottom at 9 am and devoured some rotis. I had to try and catch the train to Colombo. I missed it. It would have to be the bus. After two buses and 7 hours I finally reunite myself with my parents, greeted by Dad in a traditional Sri Lankan sarong and a nice cold Lion beer. Very nice!

A great end to a super trip and one which I’ll never forget. Thanks to all at Community Friends! I leave you now and close with this photo of the spectacular Sri Lankan beaches. Back to England and my studies at University of Sussex.

Cheers,

John Ainger
Community Friends’ Intern

Aug

2011

East Coast Adventures in Ulla

Negotiating the roads in Sri Lanka is an art which I’m sure takes years to master. Instead of looking right, then left and finally right again; you move your head from side to side like a semi-automatic machine gun for the entire width of the road.

I learnt that getting off a Sri Lankan bus also requires a great deal of skill. A skill which I also have not yet mastered. The bus pulled in at Arugambay and just I was getting off I turned my ankle and landed in a crumpled heap in front of several giggling Sri Lankan tuk-tuk drivers. I have not only cracked the screen of my computer but also badly strained my left ankle.

Jeeva and I have made the long journey from the relatively cool 4,000 foot elevation of Community Friends’ tea estate project to the east coast beaches and fishing village of Ulla where Community Friends started its first humanitarian and micro-enterprise projects immediately following the December 2004 tsunami.

Our first night was interesting. Sri Lanka does not have your average city pest. In London, we have foxes which rip open the bins and squirrels which also steal the flowers from my mum’s plants. In the US you have raccoons and the odd Coyote or skunk which play similar roles. Sri Lanka has very few, if any of these animal street dwellers. In Trinconmallee for example they had deer that see the city as a safe haven. Deer! And all over Sri Lanka you have monkeys. Jeewa made the silly mistake of leaving his bedroom window open and in return the monkey left a present on the floor. ‘ Why couldn’t they use the toilet?!’ Jeeva exclaimed.

We went in the village of Ulla, just north of the last human dwelling before Yala National park where Jeewa works. We crossed the bridge, which has been newly built after being washed away by the tsunami. When Community Friends first came here, our volunteers crossed by boat until the bridge was rebuilt.

Our first stop in Ulla was the local school which was also destroyed by the tsunami and greatly helped by Community Friends. Where the climbing frames of the playground now stand, Jeewa told me that it was once a huge hole from where the tsunami wave had lifted the entire school building out to sea. The school is really, really beautiful and once again thriving. It is great seeing Sri Lankan kids on their way to school-all very keen to learn and better themselves. I do wish more of us would have that same attitude in the UK.

Ulla School

Just half an hour ago I was hobbling on my bad ankle along the lovely beach at Arugambay when four dogs saw myself as an easy target and started growling very nastily! I slapped my flip flops aggressively together and ran to the safety of the Sri Lankan fishermen. My humiliation turned out to be a good conversation starter. We talked for a while about the similarities between England and Arugambay of which there were not many before moving on to the more serious matter of the fishing. Again, due to the heavy rains recently there have been a scarce number of fish. Mohammed the captain of the boat said that at one point during February, the lack of fish meant that he and his men had barely anything to eat for a week. Tomorrow, they leave at 4 in the morning and I have been invited to go with them.

4 o’clock is very early! I went fishing today and understood what Mohammed meant about the lack of fish in the sea. The previous day he and his fellow fisherman Karim had dropped their nets and early this morning we went out to reel them in. Mohammed doesn’t have one of the traditional Catamarans as his, like most in Ulla, had been destroyed be the tsunami. He now uses a fibreglass boat donated by another NGO.

John, Mohammed & Karim

The main staple fish of the local area is called Sear fish which can weigh up to 15 pounds or so but these are becoming far rarer. This morning under a spectacular sunrise we only managed to catch one inedible fish in the whole 500 metre long net. I could see the disappointment in both Mohammed’s and Karim’s faces. They then brought out the mackerel lines which resulted in the catch of a dozen or so fish-barely enough to feed their own families.

As Community Friends discovered, even before the tsunami, Ulla’s economy did not provide adequate needs for the people here. This is why Community Friends initiated its first pilot projects, the rice-flour collective and the chilli-grinding collective. These are separate collectives using identical grinders otherwise you end up with spicy roti (bread)—not necessarily a bad thing. The objective of the collectives is to invest in women and seed micro-enterprise businesses.

Ruwanti & her sister

I met a good friend of Community Friends, a young woman named Ruwanti who is now 20 years old. Along with her mother they bring out the customary cup of tea and chat very openly about the tsunami in which they lost five family members. Ruwanti is quite the entrepreneur herself and she makes really gorgeous sculptures out of shells and ceramic pottery to sell at market. It is an example of the kind of resourcefulness and self-sufficient desire of the people of Ulla. I almost bought one of the sculptures but as they were so fragile and my past experience with a bus I decided it was too risky. Community Friends considered the possibility of exporting or distributing Ruwanti’s products; however, the fragile nature created challenges. There are so many challenges for these people, yet they seem relaxed with their lives.

John Ainger
Community Friends’ Intern

Jul

2011

Micro-Hydro Electricity Project

Back in 2006, when Community Friends began managing the tea estate, there was no electricity or health care. Villagers have joined Community Friends as partners in land restoration. Community Friends has invested in social programs benefiting the community, like the health clinic and an eco-friendly micro-hydro project. It is remarkable to see how the micro-hydro electricity project provides free electricity to the homes of people who have never had electricity before and allows the locals to watch World Cup cricket!

Community Friends helped install the micro-hydro system. The system equipment was donated by the World Bank and then Community Friends supported the installation. The micro-hydro generator utilizes the abundant water flow in this mountainous region. There is a beautiful stream that runs through the land and drops thousands of feet in elevation from its headwaters. As a result, the generator captures the power of this stream and the village has eliminated the use of burning kerosene by promoting lifestyle shifts away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy. This provides clean power to the village and frees villagers to focus on important tasks rather than constantly struggling to obtain kerosene from far away town centers. In the future, Community Friends plans to utilize solar power as well.

I see the micro-hydro project as being one of the most important developments that Community Friends has brought to the people of Waitalawa. One of the key problems affecting them at the moment, as I see it, is young people moving out of the area–causing a negative cycle and a lack of workforce. Having electricity and connectivity through TV and hopefully the internet at some point is key to reversing this decline. Through community land stewardship and economic development, the people who work this land are becoming more empowered to manage it for themselves, benefiting future generations. This economic transition from the colonial model to a local living economy will create profits that circulate within the community.

John Ainger
Community Friends’ Intern

Jun

2011

Health Clinic Visit

Though Community Friends is only a 40 acre district amongst some 300 acres, the impact of Community Friends affects a great deal more. The health clinic, which deals with minor problems (infected cuts, providing vaccines etc.), was established by Community Friends in 2007. The clinic is housed in the original tea estate manager’s colonial-style cottage.

Tikira, age 99, I have discovered, is not the oldest of the residents of Waitalawa. Jeewa and Mutteliagiani introduced me to a 106 year old woman! As soon as we entered she sat up promptly from her rather uncomfortable straw bed to say hello. Jeewa helps me to ask her whether she has any ailments at her ripe age, ‘it is only my eyes that trouble me’ she says, ‘I cannot see as well as I would like but everything else is fine’. I can see why she is doing so very well. She has an absolutely adorable Tamil family who welcome me very sweetly as I step into their home. We pose for a quick snap before they bid me adieu, ‘watalangi’ they say, ‘see you again’. Truly wonderful people.

It later emerges that she is not the oldest one in the village of Waitalawa. Mutteligiani tells Jeewa and me that there is a 110 year old down in the lower part of the village. Imagine that, almost born in the 1800s before the invention of planes let alone space travel! Unfortunately I am unable to meet this incredible lady but Jeewa tells me the secret to a long life here is the diet, the altitude and the hard work. I can believe him. Mutteliagiani tells me that he survives each day on just one rotti and one litre of water per day whilst picking the tea on the Community Friends land.

Dr. Ajith (right in photo), a volunteer doctor with Community Friends, led the effort to establish the clinic and then transitioned the day to day operations to Marudamuththu Rajandran (left in photo), who is now the EMO (Estate Medical Officer). Today, Marudamuththu attends to a wide variety of patient needs. Having access to local health care is a great gift for these people. Before Community Friends established the clinic, the nearest medical care was at the general hospital in Kandy city, a long commute by foot and bus which many cannot afford. Marudamuththu is a fantastic guy who allowed Jeewa and me to stay at the clinic.

John Ainger
Community Friends’ Intern

Jun

2011

John & Jeeva in Waitalawa

Waitalawa is such an incredible place. The Community Friends tea estate here is situated in 40 acres of land and is one of the highest tea plantations in the Knuckles Mountain Range. It is also the only organic tea estate here.

Our driver, Yappa, who took us up to the land, does incredibly well negotiating the winding dirt track. After picking up vital supplies, we happen to pass the village manager, K.P., and a couple of the local residents. So with typical Sri Lankan kindness we give them a lift to the top. I must say I was slightly nervous about introducing myself as an Englishman from London assuming there would be some bitterness toward the British who set up the tea plantations in the first place. There isn’t. K.P. straight away tells me how the superintendent for the area 40 years ago went by the name of ‘Richard’ and was also an Englishman from London!

Furthermore I am greeted with smiles all round from the tea pickers and in particular from Soma and Tikira, who are hosting us. Tikira is one of the oldest residents in the village. He has a couple of tattoos on his arms. They are hard to make out but he says that they are of a bird and a stag. I ask him when he got them and he tells me that he was once a bit of a rebel in his youth–drinking and smoking with his friends. He doesn’t now though, and he seems almost apologetic about his past and now leads a very simple life. Now he enjoys gardening with Dasuni, his great granddaughter. Dasuni had a very difficult birth and we are very fortunate that she is here today—thanks to the doctors and directors of Community Friends who assisted with the birth.

Dasuni, age 2, with Tikira, age 99.

Before K.P. goes home to eat dinner with his wife, I with the help of Jeewa ask how the tea estate is going. K.P. as the land manager has a tough job, telling workers each morning where they will be working for the rest of the day. These decisions can greatly affect the villagers’ income. Anyway, things have been quite tough lately on the tea estates due to two main problems. Firstly, there has been an unprecedented 8 months of rain which has badly affected the tea crop this year and has contributed to soil erosion. Secondly, and possibly more worryingly, there is a shortage of tea pickers. Jeewa had noticed this on the drive up that many of the plants are passed the point of picking. Young men in particular are leaving Waitalawa and seeking better paid, less work jobs in the city. That now is the major problem that has to be tackled.

John Ainger
Community Friends’ Intern

May

2011

John Ainger in Sri Lanka

John Ainger, a Community Friends’ intern, has been traveling in Sri Lanka and sharing his insights. John will be attending University of Sussex in the fall. He is studying micro-enterprise and ecological economics with Community Friends.

After a long flight from London via Bahrain, I have just arrived at my hotel in Negombo with Jeewa, the naturalist for Community Friends. It is quite the flight into Colombo. Colombo is right next to the Second biggest lagoon in Sri Lanka (Jeewa hit me with his first fact) and it is very daunting as you fly low over this stretch of water. It is about 31 degrees Celsius but it is starting to cool and the infamous Sri Lankan mosquitoes are just waking up to begin the hunt…

Jeeva and John

Already I have an early insight into the role Community Friends has to play in Sri Lanka. On the flight over from Bahrain I sat next to a lady who had clearly been removed from her home village to work in Bahrain as a servant. Initially I presumed she had been holidaying in Bahrain, but when she said she wasn’t I began to recall some of the stories I have been told about young women being taken from their home to work in the Middle East.

I asked her what Bahrain was like she said quietly, ‘Bahrain nice, Bahrain people not nice’. I decided not to ask any more on that topic but told her my plans. She seemed very happy to be coming home. I presume she could not read English as she did not recognize the names of the places I was going to on the map. I have to say I did not realize that I would so soon discover the implications of lack of education for a woman in Sri Lanka.

Jeewa knows everyone. Even those he doesn’t know, he knows. It’s quite remarkable. I think we passed a dozen long lost friends on the road as we traveled northeast from Negombo to Kandy!

John Ainger
Community Friends’ Intern

May

2011

Portland State University Study

Dr. Jeanne Enders of Portland State University’s School of Business reports on her experience studying the work of Community Friends for an international case study competition.

In the late summer and fall of 2010, a group of us from the School of Business at Portland State University began writing a case based upon the activities of Community Friends from the time of the tsunami until 2010.

In late October, we entered this case into an international competition, The oikos Case Writing Competition (http://www.oikos-international.org/academic/cwc/) in the social entrepreneurship track. While we didn’t win the competition, we learned a great deal about the plight of women in Sri Lanka, the beauty of multi-national partnerships, the power of women’s collectives, philosophies of project ownership, the tea industry, carbon offsets and most importantly, we learned in detail about Community Friends.

Our team: Toby Roberts, undergraduate honors student, marketing major; Caroline Lewis, Masters of Business Administration graduate student; Dr. Jeanne Enders; and Alia Long, Masters of International Management graduate student.

Some of the key issues that surfaced in our case include the following:

1.) Project Identification and Ownership – the school lunch program emerged when teachers identified the problem. Ownership of the program shifted over time from a Community Friends/parent & teacher partnership to a government/parent & teacher partnership. Is this a generalizable model or is it sometimes best for outsiders to define and hang onto a project? Under what conditions is one method preferred over another and why?

2.) Microfinance vs. Microequity Models for the Collectives – why was microfinance rejected as an option for Community Friends at a specific juncture? Community Friends had the financing in place but decided to develop a microequity program instead. What does this mean and what are advantages and disadvantages of each model?

3.) Sustainability of Programs in Volatile Times and Places – Community Friends faced huge challenges by trying to operate in Ulla, a war-torn and difficult-to-reach region hit especially hard by the tsunami. Why do many social business initiatives avoid such places and what were some of the costs and benefits – tangible and intangible – to targeting such a region? What ultimately happened to the projects there? How are disaster relief organizations different from social entrepreneurship programs?

4.) Unintended Consequences or Surprises – The most surprising development in the Community Friends story, in our opinion, is the realization that upon purchasing a tea estate, Community Friends was suddenly made responsible for a group of people who for generations lived and worked on the estate and who depend completely upon the success of the estate. Are there other potential unintended consequences or likely surprises? How should one respond to such developments?

5.) Long-Term Environmental Protection vs. Short-Term Economic Pressure – The pressure of needing to support the village on the tea estate makes it challenging to transition the estate from a traditional farming method to an organic method of agriculture, or a more diverse agriculture. Transaction or transition costs take on more than just a “business meaning” when you are responsible for a group of vulnerable workers.

6.) Financial Models for Revenue Generation in Long-Term Social Enterprise – What profit-formula or revenue generation scheme is best-suited to Community Friends? Carbon offsets offer their own set of challenges but fit the values of Community Friends. How do we create an entrepreneurial spirit in the tea estate workers AND the college students recruited to sell offsets? Does the Community Friends staff need to be “motivation experts”? Also, are there other revenue generation models at this stage in Community Friends’ development that are being overlooked?

Conclusion:

We are so very grateful for the opportunity to work on this project. In addition to the written portion of the case, this project included creating a video (http://vimeo.com/16295333). The potential of the women’s collective and the tea estate as tools for social and economic improvement offer such hope for the role business can play in changing the world. We hope, at the very least, to use this case in classrooms to surface conversations about social business.

Thanks!

Jeanne Enders, PhD

Aug

2010

Meet up in Ulla!

When we first visited Sri Lanka, in January 2005 just after the tsunami, Carsten Henningsen carried hand drawn artwork created by Janet Reynoldson’s second and third graders. We had been strangers, but soon the artwork and letters were traveling back and forth between Portland and Eastern Sri Lanka and it wasn’t long before we considered each other friends.

penpal

Here is one such friend, Ruwanthi, holding up a letter from the States.
The letter she is holding reads as follows:

“Dear Miss Ruwanthi Kalpana and friends.

I am feeling sad because I read your letters and my eyes filled up with tears. I am very sorry for your losses. All of my hopes go to you. Maybe we could be pen pals. Do you know what that is? It’s when you only keep in contact by writing. That’s the “pen” part. I am very happy you survived and your sisters too. Did it hurt when you got tangled in the tree? What grade are you in? My dad is a friend of Carsten. I absolutely love the drawings you guys sent to us. How old are you? Because we probably won’t meet this is what I look like. I have short brown hair, brown eyes, dark pink lips and long eye lashes. What do you look like? What happened to your sisters? I am 9 years old, 10 next February. I will always help you in your troubles.

All hopes,
Rebecca Memminger Goodfriend”

During her eighth grade year at the Arbor School in Portland, Rebecca and all her classmates worked on yearlong study projects of their own choosing. Rebecca decided to do a photo essay on the topic of displacement in Sri Lanka and its impact on children. With the war in the area around Ulla over, it suddenly became possible for our whole family to travel somewhat freely together. So, we made plans to travel to Ulla and, it being so close to Christmas 2009, this happened to put us in Ulla for the fifth year anniversary of the tsunami.

Ruwanthi and her sister had both stayed close to Community Friends, since they had asked to join the first micro-enterprise that we formed in Ulla. This was the rice flour collective. Of course the war made it very difficult for us to communicate with Ulla between 2007 and 2009, so when we arrived for the family visit not much was known.

That first day in Ulla was exciting for all of us. I set out to look in on the collectives with Deva and Seevali, while Rebecca journeyed out with her sister Raela and mother Kathleen. These were her first moments shooting pictures around the community. After hearing the initial reports from the collectives, the three of us asked about some of the young entrepreneurs, so we could get some first hand accounts of how the program was working. One of the school kids volunteered to walk us around the village and show us where each person lived. As fate would have it, the first house that we visited was Ruwanthi’s. And who should we meet there but Rebecca, Raela and Kathleen!

The two of them had found each other on their own and within a few short minutes made all the connections back to 2005. Ruwanthi was able to find Rebecca’s original letter which she showed to my amazed daughter. Somehow, the dream we had when we conceived of Community Friends, that we would build long term, direct relationships, with people whose names we know and vice versa, was suddenly realized before our eyes.

_MG_0260

Thank you Rebecca and Ruwanthi – we are so proud of both of you!

Jay Goodfriend

May

2010

Summer Jobs for Students in the U.S.

Community Friends is offering students an opportunity to earn some extra money this summer by helping us sell carbon offsets. Mona Das is a student at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington State. She is leading the effort to support our summer student program.

Dog Park

Students can work as much or as little as they like since they receive a commission on offsets that they sell. The program is also a way for students to learn entrepreneurial marketing skills and build on their resume. Students can choose to keep the earnings or raise money for their school, sports team, or favorite cause. Please contact us if you or someone you know is interested in learning more. And please visit our carbon calculator and other information about our carbon offset program. http://www.communityfriends.org/carbon-offsets/