Warren Wilson student groups first visited the Sarvodaya Shramadana Society in the spring of 1984. At that time we had three weeks of home stays and spent the rest of the time visiting Sarvodaya projects. We were deeply touched by the experience. At that time we thought that we were visiting Sri Lanka and Sarvodaya in order to do service projects with Sarvodaya and to help third world villagers.
But we soon realized that Sarvodaya didn't want our manual labor. If villagers needed a latrine or a road or a preschool they should build it themselves and not have someone from the West do it for them. Sarvodaya means “the awakening of all”. Founded by A.T. Ariyaratne, who is still the guiding force of the program, in the late 1950’s the purpose of Sarvodaya is to help villagers to live the good life by following Buddhist principles of simplicity, honesty and generosity through which villagers can eliminate the social and economic barriers which degrade life by sharing with each other and working together. The good life comes not from things but from right attitude. But to live well everyone must have basic food, shelter, education, health care and good work. This comes, not from moving to large cities but by living simply with good work in villages.
As we lived, then and later, with villagers, we found that the simple life can be the good life. And we realized that we were not invited to do something for villagers but to find something ourselves, to be awakened ourselves to the stresses of living with luxury and opulence in a high tension life. We were there to slow down and to listen and to learn and then to come back and implement Sarvodaya’s Buddhist teachings in our own lives.
A group of 13 of us, 11 students and two leaders, Bill and Susie Mosher, have just returned from nine weeks in South Asia, three of which were with Sarvodaya. We were garlanded and honored, not for anything we had done or because of who we were, but because Sri Lankan hospitality welcomes people so warmly and fully. We saw a wide variety of Sarvodaya projects by which villagers are helped by Sarvodaya to make their own lives fuller. We visited the opening of a mini bank, saw a water project, were danced for in many Sarvodaya preschools, saw Sarvodaya groups of mostly women organizing themselves in order to transform their villages. We felt we were in the presence of something miraculous.
Over the years Warren Wilson groups have made three week visits to Sarvodaya again and again. All this time a civil war has been going on in Sri Lanka. But in spite of the many armed roadblocks and random bombings Sarvodaya took care of us and we always were safe. Through all of the civil war Sarvodaya held peace marches and vigils and huge meditation rallies and stood up to the government at some risk and tried to pull the Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese people together.
Now, once again, because of the devastating tsunami, Sarvodaya is facing a great challenge. But because there are Sarvodaya district centers all around the island (a few of which were destroyed) and they have already organized villagers in thousands of villages, Sarvodaya is ready and trusted to bring relief to traumatized villagers and is able to help people to again live the simple but good life in which they work together to restore their villages and their livelihoods.
What villagers lack is the money needed to let them rebuild wells, roads, toilets and homes. Whatever we can give, now doubled by Warren Wilson, will go a long, long way. We who have recently come back would like to focus on Sarvodaya support for children orphaned in the town of Akurala-Kahawa, where our guide on every trip, Winsor de Silva, grew up. This town, only a mile from where a train was washed into a swamp killing almost everyone on board, has been devastated. We want to give money to begin supporting children who were orphaned and then to keep in constant touch with what is achieved so that we can continue to help for the rest of this year and next and for a long time. Both Dr. Ariyaratne, for a speech, and Winsor de Silva, for an eight week stay four years ago, have been on our campus.
Please send money to College Relations, Box 6376, PO Box 9000, Asheville, NC, 28815-9000 made out to Warren Wilson College Tsunami Relief with Sarvodaya on the memo line and with Tsunami Relief on the envelop. Include your e-mail address and your regular address so that we can let you know how the money is being spent and can offer you a receipt from Sarvodaya if you need this for tax purposes. But our main purpose in being able to contact you is to try and form a group of friends here who can connect to a group of friends in Sri Lanka who can get to know and care about and support each other. We can stay linked through updates on this web page and through e-mail and through future visits to Sarvodaya.
For more on Sarvodaya and what it is doing look at their website. For more on our visits to Sri Lanka and Sarvodaya look a the slide shows on this website.
WARREN WILSON AND SARVODAYA