A Drive To Help Homeland

Teen Collects Books For Tsunami Victims

Sarasi Jayaratne was a high school freshman in 2004 when a tsunami devastated her parents' home country of Sri Lanka. Like many, she watched the destruction on television.

"Watching CNN and seeing what the devastation was like was surreal," said Jayaratne, 17, who lives in Sterling and has relatives in Sri Lanka.

One consequence of the tsunami was that 168 schools in Sri Lanka were damaged or destroyed, she said. So she started a book drive to help them.

Since then, she has shipped 8,000 books to Sri Lanka, which is planning to open 15 libraries to house them. She also started a nonprofit group, Keep Reading Foundation, this fall to promote the book collections.

Jayaratne said she came up with the idea shortly after the tsunami when she noticed that piles of children's books were gathering dust in her basement.

"Here in the United States, we have the resources -- we have the toys, the books, everything," said Jayaratne, who grew up in the United States. "Every time I went there, I felt rather guilty that there are some kids who during the school year are standing in the streets. I felt that there has to be something done there to get them back in school. English is one vital tool."

The book drive began with her going door-to-door asking her neighbors for help. "I started out describing the culture of Sri Lanka, where it is and how devastating the tsunami was," she said.

Next she approached local library officials and church leaders. She recalled meeting last year with a group of children at Potomac Falls Church in Sterling. The response was overwhelming, she said.

"Parents and children came to my house and dropped off books. Every time I came home from school, there were bags and boxes of books," she said.

She made her first shipment, 2,000 books, in June. A month later, she traveled to southern Sri Lanka, where she distributed the books and spoke with students. She also visited northern Sri Lanka, an area where there has been years of fighting between the government and the Tamil Tigers, a separatist militant group. While she was there, she said, she taught English for a week to students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Earlier this month, she made a second shipment of 6,000 books. But the need continues, she said.

"When you drive to the villages, there are some houses that are abandoned and destroyed. The roads are getting fixed, and the schools are coming back, but they just don't have the supplies," she said.

She is organizing a third shipment in January and said that administrators at Potomac Falls High School in Sterling, where she is a senior, have agreed to organize a book drive during National Reading Month.

Her goal is to deliver books to as many schools as possible, especially in the eastern province, an area she was unable to visit during her last trip.

"There are people on the other side of the world who should have the same opportunities as us," she said. "In Loudoun County, we have so much stuff sometimes we don't know what do with it. Why not help people on the other side of the world have a good life and a good future?"