Peter Weerasekera Children’s Home:

A place they could call Home

The Peter Weerasekera Children’s Home

Every year, around 2,000 children are orphaned or abandoned by their parents. Many are put in the care of institutions, such as the Peter Weerasekera Children’s Home, which cares for nearly 85 children.

“They are children found on the seashore,” says Singha Weerasekera, the founder of the Home, “or some pathetic place like a cess-pit or some similar, very sad situation, and they are sent to us by the Department of Probation and Child Care Services through the magistrate’s court.”

The home, which is located in Dambuwa, in the Gampaha District, has a Nutrition Centre to care for malnourished, abandoned infants. They are given immediate medical attention and are cared for over the next 2-3 years. The Home has a Montessori for the younger children, which is also attended by children from nearby villages.

According to Weerasekera, the Department of Probation and Child Care Services take the boys away from the home when they turn 5 and put them in a Boys’ Home, while the Home continues to keep the girls up to the age of 18.The Girls Home accommodates children of 5-18 years, in two dormitories, each in the care of a trained matron. Most of the children are sent to the best government school in Gampaha. Six have received scholarships to Yoshida International School in Sapugaskanda. All are given private classes in the afternoons, so as to keep them to the proper standard.

After they finish their schooling, the Probation & Child Care Services Department finds them accommodation, because they need to be independent, and they are sent to work.

One obtained a doctorate from Bangalore University and works overseas. Some of them come back to tell the children about their lives and what they are doing now.

“My parents yearned for children,” says Weerasekera, “but they had only me. I lost my parents in 1937 at the age of six.

Singha Weerasekera and Mrs. Mala Weerasekera

On 5 March 1959, on my mother’s death anniversary, I gifted my ancestral house to the charity and it was opened by Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike, not yet the Prime Minister.

However, to gift is very easy but to run a home for over 50 years was quite a strenuous effort.”

The Home is run by a Board of Trustees, and a committee visits every month and meets the children. Its credibility has been built up over the years and the children’s breakfast, lunch, tiffin and dinner are covered by donors.

However, funds are still short, by about four million rupees every year. For example, for the van hire for sending the Yoshida scholars to school. To raise funds there is fair at the Home, every march, which the villagers look forward to.

“No item is over Rs 200,” he says, “not even a good shirt or sarong. We also have a concert towards the end of the year.”

This year’s concert is called ‘Song for the Children’, done by American singer Doctor Zee – who does it every year, baring the expenses— accompanied by a band called The Flame.The concert is on Saturday 21 November at 7 pm, at the British School Auditorium in Colombo.