[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/miculan_sri_lanka.jpg” caption=”During her trip to Sri Lanka last April, Alison Miculan is surrounded by some of the women and children who will benefit from the widows village. Click here for FULL Size“]When McMaster's Alison Miculan arrived in Kinniya, Sri Lanka last April, she witnessed unimaginable devastation. It had been four months since a tsunami struck the village and left thousands homeless, destitute, widowed or orphaned. To Miculan, it seemed as though the tsunami had just hit. Although bodies had been removed, debris was still scattered among the village, boats ripped in half laid vacant at the edge of the sea, and piles of destroyed beds rested in piles outside the local hospital.

Her mission was to return hope to those in Kinniya. But after witnessing the destruction, she knew the devastation felt by those who had lost nearly everything cut deep.

“I had heard prior to going that this was an area that had not received much humanitarian aid, and indeed that was the case,” says McMaster's senior ethics advisor and sessional instructor in the Department of Philosophy. “Although the bodies had been taken away, it looked like the tsunami had hit two weeks ago. There was debris everywhere and everyone was still living in refugee camps.”

Kinniya in the Trincomalee district of Sri Lanka was one of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami and had received little humanitarian aid due to political unrest. In Trincomalee, 1,078 people died in the disaster, 337 went missing and 81,599 were displaced.

It was only when Miculan met with a group of widowed women and their children, confined to a house in mourning, that she knew restoration of hope was possible.

“Initially, the feeling was of desperation,” she says. Through a translator, Miculan asked the women what they saw in their future. “They answered that their situation was hopeless, that there was nowhere to live, no way to take care of their children, and no income,” Miculan says. “So I described our plans to them and asked what they would be willing to do to take care of their children, and they replied that they would do anything.”

Miculan informed them about “Come Home Again” – a children's village that will house 50 widowed women and 200 children, consisting of 25 duplexed homes and a school/vocational-training centre alongside a major resettlement area.

Miculan, with the guidance of Sri Lankan born Noor Nizam, a teaching assistant in Communication Studies has already purchased land, set up an office for the newly established Relief Aid International Canada and hired a contractor to help build the village. She also described the establishment of a vocational training centre and a manufacturing warehouse, where the women could sew or create furniture in an effort to help sustain themselves and their families. In addition, she has made arrangements with a school located across the road from the village to have it renovated and expanded so that it could accommodate the children from the village.

“At that point, they were ecstatic,” Miculan said. “The kids were dancing and everyone was singing.”

Next week, Miculan will carry out her promise when she and a group of 32 McMaster students, their parents and friends, will travel to Trincomalee to build the facilities.

The team consists of 27 students, most from McMaster, with one from McGill and one from the University of Toronto, and five team leaders, including Miculan, two parents of the students Mark Lemieux and Dollina MacMillan, Barry Yungblut, a friend of Miculan who has been involved in missionary work in Africa, Gwynneth Cook and Judith Boyd. The entire team will leave on Tuesday and half will stay for two weeks while the rest will remain for an extra week.

Miculan is confident the project will return some hope to the women left widowed by the tsunami. “They live in a region where they are not allowed to own property or inherit the property of their husbands, and as a result would either have to remarry or move in with their brothers or uncles. I don't think that would be a very good option. At least these homes will allow them to be independent.”

On Monday, Sri Lanka's consul general in Toronto, His Excellency Poologasingham, will visit McMaster to thank the group for their humanitarian relief efforts in Sri Lanka and also provide guidance on how to conduct themselves in a country that currently is experiencing political unrest following the recent assassination of the country's foreign minister.

For more information about the project or to help or sponsor the initiative, visit the Relief Aid International website at http://reliefaidint.org.