Westmont Students Spread Hope to Sri Lanka's Tsunami Orphans

Several Westmont students have returned home following a trip to Sri Lanka to help children who lost their parents in the December 2004 tsunami. Four Westmont students joined Professor Thomas Jayawardene and his wife, Jasmine, on the month-long summer service trip. The group left July 3 to meet a team of 14 to serve with the Jayawardenes’ The Children of Joy. The organization is founding a new home for about a dozen orphaned children. It’s also set up a children’s center to provide food, clothing, medical care and school needs to 150 kids.

After spending a day teaching English at the children’s center, Westmont student Jeremy Martin and the group travelled to the center of the tsunami disaster and met some of the victims. In his journal Jeremy writes: “The kids pestered me...They pointed with eagle eyes at my wallet, my back pocket...Help help, they repeated....A kid wrote it in the coral sand. h-e-l-p. Etching it into my mind. I was sad. Try saying no to a kid at (the site of the) tsunami . That will change you. I said no to a kid at the (site of the) tsunami.”

The tsunami killed more than 31,000 in Sri Lanka, leaving about 9,000 orphaned children. The Children of Joy was founded in 1999 by the Jayawardenes, who are Sri Lankan. They have already created an orphanage for those affected by Sri Lanka’s 19-year long civil war. The summer service team included volunteers from Pepperdine and Point Loma Nazarene Universities, University of Southern California and Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara.