Dear Sponsors!

This page is meant to keep you up-to-date about how we have invested or will be using your money in future.

We have received many donations without a particular purpose being mentioned. We will add these donations to those made for the construction of houses.

Some of the donations from Europe have not yet been sent to Sri Lanka. There are three reasons for this:

1) Our school received donations from guests who came to Sri Lanka after the tsunami. They gave their donations directly to us. With this money we are now able to keep our school up and running. However, please do not forget that we still need your continued support to maintain our school in the long run. You might be aware that Herr Heilig from Munich has founded a charity to support our school. You can contact him by telephone: +49 - 89 - 13 93 78 55 or by email : heilig@city-netz.com.

2) We have used some of the money for instant support to those employees who totally lost their homes.

3) The Austrian Fidis-Bank has committed itself to pay the salaries of our workers for three months. This helped us a great deal to re-construct our Lotus-Villa. The bank managers are still helping us now. Details can be found on the following website: www.fidisbank.at

With the help from the Fernando family (she is German, he is Singhalese and has contacts to the government) we are currently in negotiations with the local council of Balapitiya to obtain some land for the construction of houses. If we succeed we will save a lot of money when purchasing a plot. The money saved could then also be invested in the construction of houses. Unfortunately, these negotiations are very slow. You can imagine how difficult it can be to purchase land from a government institution. We are very grateful for Mr Fernando's support.

There is one issue which keeps bothering us and we want to make it public. We have heard that some donations were sent to Frau Süss' organisation, labelled "Peter-Huber-Schule" to support our school. Frau Süss says that she has now sent the money back to the donors saying that the money belongs to the charity. We do not know any details about this. Please let us know if you have more information about this issue.

Generally speaking, please contact us immediately if you have even the slightest doubt that your donation was not dealt with properly. We also know that many companies and institutes have set up collection accounts for donations, for example travel agents. If you want to know whether we have received your money or not please contact us directly.

We would like to finish our letter with a positive message:

All our children and young adults from the school want to express their gratitude for the donations received. Together with their teachers they would like to ask you, the sponsors, if you would like to have a tsunami drawing or painting by our students as a small thank-you gift. If you want to receive such a drawing/painting please click on drawing/painting and give us your address where we can send it.

Below you can see the housing plan. The houses may seem to be very small for a whole family but we have chosen this size and shape because it is meant to be a basic structure with provision for future expansion, according to their individual needs. The total price of one house will come to about €4.500.00. If you want to help with the construction of a house or if you know somebody who is able to do that please contact us. There are six families from Lotus-Villa and 28 from the school who have completely lost their homes.

We are happy to provide you with more information. Please send your requests via Email.

Best wishes from all our colleagues at Lotus-Villa, the children and teachers at Peter-Huber-School, and the Huber family.