Hemas Piyawara celebrates, successful decade

Hemas Group celebrated ten years of its early childhood development initiative "Piyawara" in partnership with the Children's Secretariat of the Ministry of Child Development and Women's Affairs.

Minister of Child Development and Women’s Affairs, Tissa Karaliyedde and Director of the Children's Secretariat, Yamuna Perera with the plaque presented to the Ministry to commemorate ten successful years of ‘Piyawara'. Also in the picture are (L to R) Chairperson of Hemas Outreach Foundation, Abbas Esufally, Senior Manager Corporate Communication and CSR at Hemas, Shiromi Masakorala, and CEO of Hemas Holdings, Husein Esufally.

The Piyawara project has added and upgraded 34 model preschools to the existing governmental network and enriched the lives of nearly 3,000 children.

It has a holistic approach, focusing on seven key areas - creating parental awareness, engaging in teacher-training, improving recreational facilities, empowering children with special needs, working towards eradicating child abuse, improving infrastructure development and emergency intervention during national disasters. The CEO of Hemas Holdings, Husein Esufally, also attributes the sustained financial assistance and support received from the main board of Hemas Holdings PLC and the Senior Management as yet another driving force behind Piyawara's success.

Hemas' Senior Manager Corporate Communication and CSR, Shiromi Masakorala said, "A key success factor was our partnership with the Children's Secretariat which gave us access to the government network, resource personnel, monitoring and links to all local councils which helped us sustain a project of this nature. We also gained hands-on experience working in the 29 post-tsunami make shift camps and in the Manik Farm in Vavuniya where we managed pre-schools and play areas to help children return to normalcy after their traumatic experiences".

As a first-time initiative, the 'Piyawara Community Pre-School' concept is being adopted to assist marginalised rural communities in Sri Lanka. The first such school is in Ambalnagar, 10kms from Kilinochchi town, where there has been resettlement. Hemas is also in the process of developing more schools in the resettled areas of Mullativu.