The mission of Extra Cover is to help some of Sri Lanka’s poorest school children grow up with hope. It provides basic essentials – from food and clean water to toilets and textbooks – to twenty four extremely remote village schools in the southern rainforest area. As funds allow, it also builds extra classrooms, installs playground equipment, runs tea and cinnamon-growing cooperatives, and oversees vocational schools.
Situated only a few miles from the town of Weligama, there is a more sophisticated, “urban” feel to the Polwattha School than others with whom we work. The pupils are certainly more used to seeing foreigners in their midst, and there is greater emphasis on sport here than at some of the more remote schools. […]
Of all the schools with whom we work, Kottegoda (situated about 30 minutes’ drive east of Matara) has undergone the greatest transformation since 2005. From sharing one large room, pupils now study in separate classrooms in a building atop the steep hillside that makes up the school’s grounds. It is here that the 28 children […]
Nawala bristles with energy. The staff at this school of 100 children, high up in the hills an hour northeast of Galle, is exuberant and supremely dedicated in equal measure. Mr Chandarasiri, the principal, and his colleagues have collaborated with Extra Cover on a number of projects – the most significant of which has been […]
Set in idyllic surroundings (water buffalo nonchalantly chew the cud in the paddy fields to one side while to the other playful monkeys shake the treetops) the hillside school of Bemboda currently has 25 pupils, from Grades 1-5. There is a wonderful, “family” feel about the place: under the watchful eye of their principal Mr […]
A few miles from Patawelivitiya is the small community of Mahalapitiya. Until 2010 a Buddhist monk ran the small school there and Extra Cover helped him provide the children with food, fresh water from a re-built well, stationery and shoes and socks. The school has since closed.
Pathawelivitiya is the smallest of the schools with whom Extra Cover collaborates. Less than a hundred metres from the shore of the River Ging, the school comprises a dozen pupils, who study under the tutelage of two teachers and the watchful eye of their principal Mrs Gayanthi. Over the years we have helped the school […]
