Thank you so much to everybody who has supported my voluntary service and the work of the 'Holistic Special Education Foundation (HSEF)' in Sri Lanka. I am preparing to return to Sri Lanka in November and hope to be there for 3 months. I am fund raising to facilitate more Holistic Special Education Foundation led holistic programmes for children with additional needs and disabilities in the Eastern and Northern Provinces in Sri Lanka. We will also be starting our programmes in Kandy and the Hill Country. All members of HSEF give their professional skills and time voluntarily. We want to include as many families, teachers and health professionals in our programmes as possible.

We are fund raising to run multi-dimensional programmes and collaborating with the Regional and Provincial Education and Health Departments as well as local N.G.O's. We facilitate a range of training workshops with the aim of empowering teachers, health & social care professionals and families. We work primarily in the post- war areas in Sri Lanka, where there is still much poverty, trauma and there needs to be huge long term interventions around Inclusivity and Disability. Our long term vision is to be creating and sharing our programmes in all 9 Provinces in Sri Lanka.

Community based visits and programmes are a huge part of our service. We need to provide transport- so our team can reach families in remote villages who are living in poverty and also so vehicles can bring these families to medical clinics and town based- programmes. We want to fund and arrange some mobile health clinics in different districts and Early Intervention trainings and programmes.

Many children with additional needs & disabilities in Sri Lanka are not able to attend their local school. The majority of children with complex needs & a physical impairment do not have wheelchairs, specialist equipment or receive any physiotherapy, speech & language therapy or any therapeutic intervention. For many children who have more moderate additional needs they are unable to go to school because their family live in poverty and can't afford the transportation costs to travel to the nearest government school with a special class.

We will also be spending time in some schools who have classes for children with additional needs and they desperately need resources and for the teachers to receive more specialist training. We want to fund and send from the UK sensory integration equipment and educational resources for schools and children's homes

Thank you for reading my post. I am so grateful for all the support in many forms which I have received over the last 2 and half years. All donations are so very gratefully received and your donations will go directly towards funding our programmes, resources and transportation within Sri Lanka.

If you would like more info and/or would like to help in any way- please message or email me.

Huge Thank you,

Julie X