Sine the fateful morning of tsunami two persons in the City of Fulda, near Frankfurt in Germany were thinking how to help the desperate people affected by the tsunami catastrophe, in Sri Lanka. Sumanasiri de Silva of Dodanduwa on the South coast of Sri Lanka has resided their for nearly 22 years living in Fulda since his arrival there in 1982.
Both Sumanasiri and his German born wife Nicole are known to Miss Becker who is the Secretary of the Government Agent of the City of Fulda. Through Becker they could meet the GA of the City to convene a high level discussion on implementing a mechanism of raising funds to provide relief assistance of the tsunami affected people in Sri Lanka.
Miss Becker revealed that there was a German national named Tobias Moretti attached to the Fire Brigade of the City of Fulda. Both Sumanasiri and Tobias were highly surprised to meet each other having equal interests in helping the tsunami affected people in Sri Lanka.
On 28th December 2004 Sumanasiri spoke to Tobias in the Fire Brigade over the phone and on the following day they met each other for further discussions on the issue of tsunami and its impact on the people of Sri Lanka. By then Tobias had already contacted the GA the Provincial Newspaper of Fulda the Red Cross, the Technical Rescue Organisation (THN).
Mayor of the City of Fulda Moeller, after studying the aims and objectives of this humanitarian project envisaged on providing relief assistance or the displaced communities of Sri Lanka agreed to extend his cooperation.
As the Mayor and the Fire Brigade of the City of Fulda had given green light in launching the fund raising during a day a sum of 5810 EURO could be collected. Since 28th December 2004, members of this project called 'Help South Asia', could be seen raising funds along the streets of the City of Fulda.
A German NGO named MALTESER which is also handling several humanitarian projects and relief assistance has been given the management of the funds raised by the members of Help South Asia which had already raised a fund of half a million euros.
MALTESER the German NGO had made arrangements to donate one fifth of the funds raised by Help South Asia for the tsunami affected communities in Thailand.
The balance of 52 million of rupees would be allocated for the relief assistance and out of that 19 million rupees would be utilized in the construction of an Orphanage in the Galle district and affiliated to it several other projects promoting Vocational Education, Languages and Computer Science would be started as continuous programmes specially for the benefit of the children living in tsunami affected areas.
Khalid
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