The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is a self-governance movement in Sri Lanka, which provides comprehensive development and conflict resolution programs to villages. It is also the largest indigenous organization working in reconstruction from the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Founded in 1958 by Dr A. T. Ariyaratne when he took, “forty high school students and twelve teachers from Nalanda College Colombo on “an educational experiment” to an outcaste village Kathaluwa and helped the villagers fix it up. It is based on Buddhist and Gandhian principles, including sarvodaya from which it got the name and swaraj (self-governance). The word "shramadana" means "a gift of labor".
As of 2006, Sarvodaya staff people and programs are active in some 15,000 (of 38,000) villages in Sri Lanka. The organization estimates that 11 million citizens are individual beneficiaries of one of their programs. The group distributes funds from a financial reserve bank of 1.6 billion rupees.
Read more about Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement: Program, External Links
Famous quotes containing the word movement:
“Reporters for tabloid newspapers beat a path to the park entrance each summer when the national convention of nudists is held, but the cult’s requirement that visitors disrobe is an obstacle to complete coverage of nudist news. Local residents interested in the nudist movement but as yet unwilling to affiliate make observations from rowboats in Great Egg Harbor River.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)