Sujatha Vidyalaya
Sujatha College is another big school with about 4000 girls in the primary and secondary section. There were numerous pen friendships carried out in English, and in 2012, a German girl, grade 12, student of Werner Heisenberg Gymnasium in Neuwied, even visited her Srilankan pen friend and was invited to stay in her family for two weeks.
While construction works were going on at Rahula College in 2005/2006, and while our Friendship Association kept on reporting regularly and asking for more donations, more and more people wanted to know what we were doing for girls. We started contact with Sujatha College and were able to donate a small dormitory for 12 girls in summer 2006 that helped to counter cramped conditions at Sujatha hostel. One year later, in August 2007 the foundation stone was laid for a two-storey-building giving room to 48 girls in 2008. (Same procedure as at Rahula College: We looked for clever girls from poor families who were most successful in grade 5 – tests, but would not have been able to pay hostel fees, when they lived in remote areas.) There are sponsors who pay these fees regularly and even visited the families living far away from Matara to get an impression of the way of life and to see that their support is highly justified.