Empowering the children of the North and South:

HSBC Galle Literary Festival 2012

Cargills Magic, Sri Lanka’s dairy ice cream brand together with One Trust Sri Lanka, have come forward to support the children’s programme of the internationally acclaimed HSBC Galle Literary Festival in January next year. In addition to the main children’s programme, the festival would include a community outreach aspect in Northern and Southern Sri Lanka.

“The main children’s programme is always a popular line up where we have acclaimed Sri Lankan and International authors working with five to 14 years olds. The focus is to educate kids about social and environmental issues in Sri Lanka and also bring out their inherent talents, harness them and develop new skills. All this, while having fun. We usually have 200 kids attending two days of events that run in parallel with the main festival,” festival director Amrita Pieris explained.

“We also run two free programmes for the children of the Galle Fort and a school’s day programme for local schools. These would include writing workshops, reading activities and sessions on environmental conservation,” she added.

This year the festival has extended its mandate to include programmes conducted free of charge for school children and teachers from the North. “We will have selected children’s authors visiting the North to work with kids from disadvantaged schools.

They would focus on building their ability of creative expression which is therapeutic for kids who have suffered from years of conflict. The authors would also conduct teacher workshops on the art of storytelling and harnessing the cultural skills of kids,” Pieris observed.

“I must add that we appreciate the support extended to us by Magic and One Trust Sri Lanka because they have come forward to sponsor the entire children’s programme going over and beyond the commercial imperatives, focusing on making a meaningful impact on children through the festival,” Amrita continued.

Cargills (Ceylon) Chief Executive Officer Ranjit Page noted that Magic and One Trust have come forward to support the children’s programme of the festival in view of its engagement with the Northern and Southern communities. “When we heard about this programme we were immediately interested because Cargills, our brands and our vision is all about creating opportunity for the people of Sri Lanka.

The Galle Literary Festival is a wonderful concept that has great potential internationally and we want to see the dividends of this festival being taken to the disadvantaged communities as well. This is why we came forward to support the overall children’s programme with major emphasis on the community engagement aspect,” he said.