Phase 25 July to September 2005

On his head Lokuthatha has to carry a covered statue through the children’s village, which had been brought by the monks from a very old monastery. A long procession of monks, children, employees and guests is moving down to the Moonlight house, which has been decorated very nicely for this event.

To extend our hands after the attacks of June 23rd and to weaken the prejudice, that we support mainly the Tamil minority, we are celebrating a big Buddhist ceremony, called Pirit, inviting also 21 Buddhist monks.

We are praying together from the evening of the 31st of July till the morning of 1st of August, we feed and honour the monks as representatives of Buddhism. All children and employees, no matter which faith they have, celebrate and pray together and show their respect to the Buddhist religion.

The monks are very impressed by the children’s village, our temple area, the children’s houses and especially our meditation place up at “heavens door”.

With a TV team of RTL the actor Piere Price visited some projects of Little Smile. Deeply moved was this man, who embodied like nobody else the good Indian, by the need in Sri Lanka, more than half a year after the Tsunami. He accompanies Michael Kreitmeir for 5 days. They also visited a refugee camp and he saw the leader of the organisation also as male nurse.

At an opening ceremony for a house of a Tsnumai widow with children the actor also met the 18-year-old Manuel Kreitmeir, who experienced the Tsunami in Kalmunai and the consequences of the catastrophe on his own. To support the construction of a children’s hospital in this very severely destroyed city at the East coast, Winnetou will collect donations together with RTL in Germany.

To make children smile! Any commitment is rewarded. Piere Price reached this conviction after some experiences with Michael Kreitmeir. Spontaneously, the actor promised to support Little Smile even beyond the support of the RTL program “Spendenmarathon”.

How fast a year goes by!
After one year and 6 days Manuel Kreitmeir is leaving the children’s village and Sri Lanka, but not Little Smile. He will attend a special economics training in Munich to acquire knowledge, which is needed in Little Smile very urgently, to run the projects on an economically sound and long term basis.

To be there, when you are needed – help through Rotarians
Also the Rotarians Werner Nahler (right) and Günter Glatz come to Sri Lanka to see for themselves the work of Little Smile. Rotarian’s clubs from Allgäu and the neighbouring Austria agreed to help Little Smile to equip the International School and the children’s hospita

To give widows and their children a new home
Many women, who never learned to care for themselves, became widows because of Tsunami. To help these women, not to separate them from their children, but to give mothers and children a new home as well as to ensure education for these women so that they can run their lives by themselves later on, for this Little Smile made itself responsible and therefore within the year some mother-and-child houses in Kalmunai, Galle and around the children’s village Koslanda were built. The construction of such a house as well as education for the mother, which takes 3 years, and aid for schooling of the children till they are 16 years old cost around 10.000 Euro per family. Companies, organisations, private persons took over sponsorships to make this great act of help possible.

Detailed information about this and other Tsunami activities through Little Smile will be published in our annual report 2005 on the Internet till March 2006 at the latest.