Impact

By Nilmi S

Impact is the story of a Canadian-Sri Lankan Social Entrepreneur who found her identity through her journey to create social impact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781008993716

Book preview

luck!

Introduction

We arrived by donkey cart into the village, the large wooden slabs of the cart held together by rusty nails and weathered pieces of old rope. Dusty from our trip over the sandy roads and bottoms aching from hitting potholes, we had finally reached our destination: the deep village. We sighed in relief as we arrived.

A man came towards us, dark, cracking skin with feet wedged into old leather sandals wearing a large Boubou, a common dress found in Senegal, West Africa that looked more like something a woman would wear than a man. There was a twinkle in his eyes as he held out his hand to greet us and told us he was the Village Chief. His palms were dry and callused, yet strong. He had the hands of a farmer who had spent his whole life working in the fields. He watched us intently as we opened one of the cardboard boxes we had piled atop the donkey cart. We presented him with the solar panel that would soon capture sunlight and power lighting for his home. He looked at it, turning it in his hands, observing all the intricate parts. You could see by the way he looked at it, he was not sure what to expect.

Grabbing some tools - we took a hammer, nails, the three lights and battery - and began to install the solar system at his home. He raised his hoarse ageing voice

I have 4 wives, so we will need more than one! he exclaimed in broken French.

We laughed and said there were enough solar systems for everyone.

We stretched the wires through his gritty clay hut using a hammer to push nails through handmade holes. I climbed up a ladder to rest the panel on the thatched straw roof, attached it with thin wires and dropped back onto the sand, narrowly missing a chicken who had escaped its pen. We fixed the lights by weaving them between branches that held up the straw roof. It was getting dark and we hoped that the battery, which we set down on an overturned pail, was charged. Children and other villagers gathered around, quiet and curious to see what we were doing. It was silent as they held their breath waiting for what was to come.

We took a step back and clicked on the lights. The light was bright and the whole house lit up. The man’s eyes widened, shining as bright as the light in front of him. And he said I am 70 years old, and I have never seen light. Today, Oolu has brought me light. I trust you.

Chapter 1

Inspired

There are a few people that inspired me to start my journey working in international development.

The first was my mom, who consistently told me to eat everything on my plate because there was always someone less fortunate than me. As a Budd-ish (what I call someone who sometimes practiced Buddhism), she believed that all the positive energy that I give to the world will eventually be returned.

My second wave of inspiration came when I met Romeo Dallaire at a talk at my university. A Canadian General working in Rwanda, he warned the rest of the world about the genocide in 1994. If people had listened to his warnings, they could have prevented the mass slaughter of 100,000 Tutsi, Twa and moderate Hutu in the span of 100 days. Romeo Dalaire retold the atrocities he witnessed unfold in Rwanda. It was traumatizing to relive through his memories, but as his voice shook, I realized the extent to which he and his troops - a UN peacekeeping force sent to facilitate a truce between the ethnic groups - showed solidarity in action. I was hanging onto his every word. Romeo Dallaire would always end his books and his speeches with the same lines: Peux ce que veux, allons-y, meaning, Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Let’s go. From early on, I leaned on this mantra to keep me going when things seemed impossible.

My third inspiration was Ishmail Beah, a refugee who battled countless obstacles in his childhood as a young soldier, brainwashed, drugged, and forced to kill during the civil war in Sierra Leone. He was barely a teenager when his town was engulfed in the war in the 1990s and his whole family was later slain in the chaos. Shooting [was normalized], like drinking a glass of water¹ he said. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group notorious for hacking off limbs and persuading vulnerable children into their heavily armed groups - fought government forces for control of the diamond rich West African state. Children as young as five years old were often equipped with lightweight automatic rifles like the AK47. His story was one of courage, pain, and activism. When I was 15, I read his book A Long Way Gone, where he wrote about his experience moving from child soldier to United Nations activist, and I was touched by his story.

I decided early on that I wanted to make an impact on the world and these three people, and their stories inspired me to start my journey.

___________________________

1Barnett, Errol (2012). ‘Ex-child-soldier: 'Shooting became just like drinking a glass of water.'’ CNN, October 9.

Chapter 2:

My parents

Growing up, my whole life had been about security and stability.

My parents were both born and raised in Sri Lanka, a small island off the southern coast of India. If you asked my mom about her up bringing, she would refer to it as a time when people wanted to leave. She was born in the 1950’s when there was not much opportunity on the island and there was a hunger to travel and seize new possibilities abroad.

My mom, an extremely bright and ambitious city girl from Nugegoda, a town 20 minutes outside of Colombo, Sri Lanka and my dad, a village boy, would later get married.

Ammi (mom in Sinhalese,) or Rajini (her name, pronounced Rah-Genie) is a small-made, light-skinned woman with almond eyes, skinny legs like Mickey Mouse and jet-black hair. Growing up, she was sporty and played volleyball and netball in school.

My dad was born and raised in the South of Sri Lanka among the paddy fields in a village called Pareigama. He was from a poor village where men would wear the traditional sarama, a batik, tie dye-looking material wrapped around the waist like a skirt; and the women wore the traditional saris (brightly colored fabric wrapped entirely around their bodies) to protect themselves from the intense heat. He was tall, with a thick dark beard, a moustache and hair along the circumference of his head, except for a bald patch which sat right atop. His figure was offset by a large round belly that would shake when he sang or laughed.

After graduating, they both aced their all-island exams - a British test that qualified entrance into university - a stark reminder of Sri Lanka’s colonial ties with England. Both parents would earn scholarships to leave Sri Lanka (my father two years ahead of my mom) and complete a six-year program in Moscow, Russia. In the first year, they learned the Russian language and the following years they studied their bachelor’s and master’s entirely in this foreign language. Both my mom and dad graduated from the program with master’s degrees in chemical engineering and agronomy, respectively. After graduation, they flew back to Sri Lanka to get married. Within days, my dad, who was working on a project for the International Development Research Council (IDRC) funded by the Canadian government, was offered a scholarship to work full time in Canada. They left their island paradise days later to restart their lives in the cold North.

In those days, it was a big deal to leave your country of origin and set off for a better life. Whether it be for adventure, school, or a better job with more opportunities – immigrant families make incredible sacrifices when uprooting to relocate to developed countries.

By the time they arrived in Canada, my mom had two university degrees and went on to earn her PhD in physical chemistry and a degree in education to teach at the University of Toronto. Later, she became a high school teacher in Guelph, Ontario. After 5 years of teaching high school, she left the chaotic environment for a chemistry lab, earning the reputation of an extremely hard worker and leader at the lab. When things