Smooth Sailing

I was so proud of our girls this week.

We started work at Panadura in mid-November, introducing girls bit by bit to the program, starting with jewelry techniques, bringing in goals and planning, and finally setting up the full workshop structure for the girls to run.

This was the first week when we had the girls run the shop independently and the bank and it was amazing to see how smoothly things ran. ALNM, a girl who’s often a little whirlwind during the workshops, ran the shop with the help of two other girls. She carefully stacked the beads by size, lined up all of her supplies, and kept all her customers in line.

Having the girls run things (as they do at MaSevana) has been our goal for the past month, so it’s a relief to see it going so well. I even had a moment to stop and catch my breath! And when I did, I looked around; in one corner Nirukshi was orienting two new girls to the program, in another SR was supervising the bankers, in a third the shop was running (a little chaotically, but that’s the Sri Lankan style), and in the forth corner our volunteer Jenny was quietly teaching girls the names of the months in English. The rest of the girls sat working on their current pieces.