Dear friends of Little Smile,

All of Sri Lanka was celebrating the most important festival of the year on 13th and 14th of April:
The Sinhala New Year festival.
Public life is closed till 24th of April at least, as a result people visit their families and a new beginning is in the centre. Many people as well as all workers with their families visited us, bringingt cakes or biscuits and leaves of the holy bodhi tree as a sign of respect and closeness. This year’s New Year Festival especially is connected with a big hope for a new beginning after the tsunami catastrophe- to have a year of reconstruction and being together without religious borders. You can feel this hope in Little Smile because the efforts of the past months are showing results. We were able to finalize the preparation for the construction of a children's hospital in Kalmunai; the first 5 boats were handed over; there are 48 girls from the tsunami region around Batticaloa visiting the children’s village in Koslanda at the moment; the consulting centre and a pre-school in Galle have been completed; a house for boys and a mother-child-house in Little Smile will be completed in June; the land purchase in Ampare and Monaragala is nearly done; and much more.

Little Smile would like to hand over some symbolic bodhi tree leaves to you in Germany as a sign of gratitude for your support and to symbolize a hope that it will be possible to give a future to people in need, especially children in the Buddhist year 2548.

SUBA ALUTH AWURUDDAK WEWA – HAPPY NEW YEAR

YOUR MICHAEL KREIMEIR