The Mother Sri Lanka movement was set up in 2008 with the blessings of the President’s Office by a small group of patriotic citizens who wished to tell their family of twenty million to hold their heads high in pride, believing in themselves and giving back to their motherland.
Founded by Dr. Janaki Kuruppu, Mother Sri Lanka is a non-profit, independent charity using an operational model of private funding, public sector infrastructure and managed by a team of professionals from all sectors.
During the past 15 years, it has carried out numerous projects to instill the values of responsible citizenship, ethnic harmony and national pride among Sri Lankans.
Responsible citizenship
A spokesman for the organisation said, “We at MSL feel that as the country is gaining material development, there is a dire need to develop the feeling of responsibility among our citizens to appreciate the resources given to us as citizens.
Hence, we have embarked on this endeavour of building ‘Responsible Citizenship’ with our children starting from their school days. We are the first and probably the only organisation focusing on developing ‘Responsible Citizens’ which we believe is an essential component for the country to progress.
“Mother Sri Lanka’s flagship schools program named MSL Project RUN was launched in 2012, as a concept of Dr. Janaki Kuruppu with the blessings of the Ministry of Education. MSL Project RUN has become the practical aspect of the Citizen Education subject which will eventually help build responsible citizens. The project has been introduced to 2,600 schools island wide and has shown excellent progress since its inception,” he said.
The “Love Sri Lanka” project launched in 2016, with the main aim of protecting livelihoods of micro entrepreneurs who are engaged in the production of authentic Sri Lankan products.
The final outcome of the project is to alleviate poverty of vulnerable segments of society, women’s empowerment and ensuring the continuity of the production of authentic Sri Lankan products for our future generations. The project is a non-profit, self-financed project and currently approximately 125 micro entrepreneurs from 10 districts with over 1,000 families directly and over 5,000 families indirectly benefit from this MSL initiative.
MSL Project RUN, an acronym of three powerful components, Responsible Citizenship, Unity and National Pride is a concept where children were motivated and encouraged to design projects that helped uplift lives and enrich communities across the island.
The holistic objective of this project is developing a ‘Responsible Citizen’ while instilling positive thinking and the values of ethnic harmony, leadership and teamwork. The project also focuses on enhancing entrepreneurship, leadership qualities and project management skills of the youth which will eventually develop students who are strategic thinkers, analysts, motivators and group achievers who can contribute towards Nation building at a young age.
In the last round of the Project RUN competition held in 2022/23, around 150 schools carried out Project RUN and of them 75 schools participated in the provincial finals. Eleven schools were selected as provincial winners while another three schools were selected as all island winners and recognised at the final award ceremony held at the Temple Trees auditorium.
Three national level winning schools in rural areas in Chunakkam, Jaffna, Walasmulla and Bandarawela were presented computer labs.
