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About Us

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Organisation Slogan

World's First-Ever "Free Electricity, Free Gas, Free Fertilizer" For The Poor Pogram

Vision

In Realising A Brighter Future for Sri Lanka, Her Children & Her Mother Nature

Mission

Striving to eliminate poverty to create empowerment in communities; saving much needed foreign exchange to Sri Lanka while improving cleaner environment & sustainability to bring in a new hope for Sri Lanka!

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Who We Are?

Save Our Sri Lanka (SOS) is an environmental & people's organisation. It had a humble beginning and founded on a noble thought. Our beginning largely coincided with the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami tragedy that struck on this beautiful island nation. In minutes of catasprophe, Sri Lanka lost many valuable lives, causing many the other irreparable economic, social & cultural damages permanently.

It was right at this shock & grief stricken background in which we decided to reach out to the victims who got caught in the centre of the tragedy, as fast and best as we could. The news about Tsunami went around the world in minutes and the attention was drawn from all parts of the world and Sri Lanka too came under the spotlight

Our small group went out to people to offer relief facilities that began right from the next day. Finding an identity for us was also a requirement. We gave it the name: "Aluth Lanka" (a New Sri Lanka), at Roomassala Hill in Unawatuna. Aluth Lanka was the main relief base camp in Unawatuna. We were abundantly helped by some friends from Germany to do what we did for a period of six months.

Our humanitarian effort covered several different areas of engagement. We provided the displaced victims with food, building houses, repairing 100s of damaged three wheelers, fishing boats and little corner shops. Aluth Lanka also offered financial support to restart their livelihoods, repairing schools as well as other community structures in the Galle district extended up to Kirinda in Hambantota district to get their lives back on feet.

Our housing construction work began on 12th of January, 2005. We completed and gave away 67 houses during our project period time. (It would be important for us to pay gratitude also to "Holcim Cement" for their generosity extended to us to make our housing project a complete success).

By the end of our work in 2005, we shifted our functioning focus as a relief provider. Because the environmental damage happening on each day is much more than a Tsunami damage that can take place once in many years. We wanted to register ourselves as an environment caring group. We also gave our organisation a new name: "Save Our Sri Lanka" (SOS).

According to the UN reports, Sri Lanka, despite its small land size, stands as the 5th main ocean polluting country in the world. UN also carries negative records about Sri Lanka on areas like; deforestation, carbon emission, soil acidification levels, inland water body contamination, air pollution, sound pollution, damages to wildlife & animals, unregulated fishing practices….. Negative press like that is not favourable to any country, mainly not to Sri Lanka as an attractive holiday destination. We know that the majority among the people do not want negative publicity on their county. Save Our Sri Lanka (SOS) is certain that Sri Lankan people love their forests, wildlife, and the environment. Therefore, as Save Our Sri Lanka (SOS), we indeed want to represent this silent voice, share their strength and subscribe to their sentiments. We also strongly believe that there is a possibility plus a responsibility to reverse this gloom-ridden picture on the country and to change it to be one with a brighter future. We are committed to help the younger generation, as the rightful future scions of Sri Lanka since they deserve a respectful & decent future. Protecting the environment for them essentially stands as a tall priority in our agenda.

In the types of work we do to protect the environment we carefully choose right programs that will click complements to both people and the Mother Natures‘ benefit. This means, with our programs there are ample opportunities to enrich people's lives and bring in a tangible & sustainable harmony to change in Sri Lanka. Save Our Sri Lanka (SOS) keeps an important practice in us to update itself with new information published by UNO and other world environmental institutes. This makes it easier to do our work for people : to be productive, success oriented, having confidence. Therefore, we would like to say that our activities are more aligned with UNO ideas. We create a tailor made version of these heavy ideas to suit the aspirations of communities that we are serving.

As much as 75-80% of the population in Sri Lanka is still not aware of Climate-Change, sustainable development etc., as subjects with critical validation. UN- COP resolutions and such world scale programs are still not satisfactorily absorbed into the grassroot level communities in many countries, also not in Sri Lanka. Save Our Sri Lanka (SOS) objectively focuses on eliminating such hurdles. With experience for over 15 years in working in remote parts in Sri Lanka we may say that there are more effective ways to put these professional ideas to produce better results. We, therefore, would like to propose to the UNO to take its heavy diplomatic ideas that are usually written in books & papers or mainly being discussed in top conference halls etc., to hand down to organisations that are socially committed. Particularly those who understand the true vibes of the people who are struggling to understand about the new world.

Our Team

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Ulla

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Claudia

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Wolfgang

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Susanne

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Rolf

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Gerlinde

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Peter

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Uli

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Frank

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Stephanie

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Laszlo

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Katya

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Micha + Tina

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Nikola

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Senaka

"Benevolence is the characteristic element of humanity" - Confucius