Ocean Stars Trust
Ocean Stars Trust was founded in Easter 2005 following the devastating Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 in which an estimated 50,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed. In light of the Tsunami devastation our founder, Dilanee Bunter, who was born and raised in Sri Lanka before moving to the UK aged 15, felt a calling to reconnect with her roots and started by fundraising in the UK for emergency Tsunami relief, before focusing more on education projects.
Being a former teacher, Dilanee was determined to ensure that communities affected by the Tsunami, as well as the 30-year civil war which ended in 2010, had access to preschool education. This, in addition to supporting the poorest and most marginalized families with educational sponsorship, has seen Ocean Stars Trust develop from an emergency relief fund to a registered UK charity that is currently:
- Supporting 29 preschools nationwide with classroom resources and teacher salaries
- Supporting infrastructure projects
- Providing 200 families with educational sponsorship
- Facilitating frequent and innovative teacher training
- Funding community centres providing computer and sewing classes
- Providing meaningful employment and salaries to 5 full-time Ocean Stars Lanka staff
- Providing volunteer opportunities for hundreds of British school children, university students and adults
To fund the vast majority of its work, OST has relied on community-based fundraising predominantly in the UK. Throughout the year, OST is famous for running quiz nights, curry evenings and variety shows which have been great opportunities for engaging new people into the work of the charity.
In recent years, however, as the charity has developed strategic goals to develop and improve its educational programme, OST has sought funding from grant funders to assist with the implementation of these strategic goals.
Ocean Stars Lanka
Ocean Stars Lanka (OSL), a registered Nongovernmental organization in NGO secretariat Colombo and district secretariat (FL-1708004) , Batticaloa. We have been working in Sri Lanka since 2005 for educational development in Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Kilinochchi, Colombo and Yatiyantota. Our mother NGO is Ocean stars trust, UK Registered Charity 1110022 (OST UK). We receive funds from OST UK for all our work in Sri Lanka empowering children through education.
The main focus areas of OSL are support to preschools, sponsoring vulnerable children, cultural exchange with link schools and running the Hope houses for the livelihood of women.
Our Child Development Programme (CDP) is one of the main programmes under our preschool programme. The Child Development Program (CDP) provides teachers with an assessment tool to measure the progress of knowledge and skills of preschool children.