How and why the Tea Leaf Trust was formed
The Tea Leaf Trust was formed in January 2008 after a honeymoon visit to Sri Lanka (please see link page for full story) opened our eyes to the suffering experienced by many of the thousands of tea pickers and their families in the hill country.
The honeymoon-turned-fact-finding-mission, revealed that behind the rolling hills of lush green leaves and picture postcards of smiling young women plucking tea, there is hidden a story of entrenched hardship and hopelessness, of personal, civil and humanitarian rights abuse and ongoing health issues, both physiological and psychological.
The issues
Poverty and poor education provision
A root cause of the misery experienced by the tea pluckers and their families is the lack of/ poor educational provision for plantation workers and their children. Contributory factors include:
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Dilapidation/neglect of school buildings and furnishings
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Lack of qualified teachers; teaching vacancies remain open
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Poverty; parents cannot afford exercise books, stationary and contributory facility fees
- Parents taking their children out of school to help them earn extra money on estates or as servants for rich families
- Lack of parental support; loss of faith in the education system because of the poor quality of schooling and no access to higher education
- Lack of role models; very few local people have completed full-time/further education, and/or are in alternative occupations
A lack of quality education strongly impacts on overall poverty experienced by families working in the tea sector, enforcing and sustaining the generational cycle of poverty. This ensures a generational dependency on plucking tea, disempowerment and deprivation of aspiration, all resulting in no opportunity to choose, and the lack of desire to escape.
The hill country also comprises of rural farming communities (mainly Singhalese) that cultivate crops for hotels, restaurants, shops and markets around the island. These communities live in close proximity to the tea estates, often directly bordering the plantations. The majority of these communities also consist of poorly paid labourers and their families who work the land by hand. Field research conducted by the Tea Leaf Trust since being in Sri Lanka has shown that poverty indicators including educational provision for the young people of these communities is very similar to that of the tea estates. This is why we have extended our project to include these communities as well.
Sri Lanka, until very recently, has been engaged in a 'civil' war. A number of early parliamentary acts passed soon after independence, coupled with 26 years of war between the Singhalese government and the LTTE ('Tamil Tigers') has caused a rift between the Singhalese and Tamil communities, with a recent surge in ethnic tension and violence. Education has been indicated to be one of the factors in the conflict; whilst Sri Lanka is a multicultural country, this is not reflected in the classroom. Schools in Sri Lanka do not teach in one common language, rather Governmental Schools teach in the Singhala or Tamil language, with international schools opting for English as their teaching medium. This means that Tamil and Muslim children attend Tamil-language or Islamic schools (Muslims), whilst Singhalese children attend Singhalese-language schools. An education segregated by language is ethnically divisive, facilitating mistrust, suspicion and fear between the ethnicities, which escalates as children grow to adulthood.
The Tea Leaf Trust strongly believes that shared educational resources can promote cohesion between the ethnic groups. Whilst the government has declared that the war is over, the recent rise in ethnic tensions means that is more important than ever to promote understanding. Students of differing backgrounds, working together for a common aim can go some way to heal the rift that currently exists between the different ethnic communities of the country.