Building a Future

Our Building a Future projects bring great change to local communities. On this page we portray our current portfolio of Building a Future Projects

Overview


Building a Future is one of the recurring projects of Boost Foundation. The idea is simple: to partner with local NGO’s to empower them in their efforts to bring sustainable change to the world. More specifically, we intend to help communities grow by helping them to ‘build’ long lasting infrastructure such as wells and schools. 

What is the problem?

Many families and people in rural Sri Lanka live below the poverty line and have difficulty in getting even the basic needs. Luckily, public education is free in a sense that parents do not have to pay school fees. But this does not solve the problem for everyone. 
The government in Sri Lanka will only help a school once they have more than 50 children attending. 

This means that there are only schools in bigger villages or cities and that despite the fact that education is free, parents still have difficulty in sending their children to far away schools since they cannot pay for transport or school materials such as shoes, uniforms, educational materials like books or stationeries.

Without these things children are not allowed to attend school and as a result the children do not get an education but either help their parents by working on the fields or stay idol at home.  

Our Sustainable Solution

Boost Foundation provides FutureCare with the funding and project management skills to rebuild and renovate schools in rural Sri Lanka and sponsor at least 50 children with the materials needed so that they can attend school. Once the schools are renovated, more children will be able to attend the schools.

An increased number of children triggers the government to start investing in the school providing it with more teachers and better school facilities so that the school becomes sustainable and does not need the help of Boost Foundation or FutureCare anymore.  

By doing this, we support the entire community since the children get a primary education, learn to speak Sinhalese and English  and therefore providing them with many more opportunities than just working the land for which there are enough people. In turn, the opportunities that the children get gives the local community a boost and it can place itself, literally on the map.  

For the poorest of families just rebuilding a school and making sure that the school can remain in existence is not enough. The kids need pens, paper, books, shoes, a uniform and a backpack to keep it all tidy. Without these basic needs they would attend a building, not a school. Therefore, we provide these families and their kids with these basic needs as well.

Our local partner FutureCare

FutureCare, a local charity organization and our close partner was set up in 2006, is dedicated to exactly this problem. It was set up by Ramani Smits a lady from Kandy in the Central Provence of Sri Lanka. Ramani is the youngest daughter of a spice plantation holder. After she completed her agricultural education, she met a Dutchman, Henk Smits. Henk worked at the United Nations and immigrated to Sri Lanka at the age of 45. Henk is an inspiring person who has worked for mentally handicapped orphan boys in Sri Lanka over the last 30 years. A few years after FutureCare started, Sameera joined the company as his passion is to help as many people as he can. He was immediately drawn to project management and helps with all the heavy lifting and networking with the locals. The amount of schools and children that come to them for help keep increasing on a yearly basis, and therefore in order for them to keep helping these communities they can use all the support they can get.  

FutureCare helps poor families and schools. Small schools that are in rural villages come to FutureCare asking for help as they are too small for the government to invest in. These schools are in remote areas with mostly no water nor proper infrastructure. They have a few teachers and hardly any materials. FutureCare helps them by renovating the buildings and providing them with the basic needs to that more children are able to attend school. FutureCare also provides the children with the individual materials that are needed like socks, shoes, uniforms and books to attend school so that the families are not restricted to keeping the children at home or working the fields.

“We believe education is society’s most important public investment. A first-class education prepares these students to be the next generation of active citizens, good parents and community leaders. To ensure that all students have equal access to educational resources, Future Care operates to provide better school facilities and supplies to these schools and the children with your kind help”  
Ramani Smits, FutureCare
 

What we build

In the future we want school infrastructures to be in good condition so that the school will be able to attract more children and most importantly that the children have a proper place to study. This means that each school should have at least the following: 

  • Class rooms (building) 
  • Proper entrance and access to the school buildings
  • Access to clean running water  
  • Sanitation facilities  
  • Safe area protected from environment and traffic 
  • Play ground  
  • Library 
  • Materials and equipment needed attend school 

We at Boost Foundation believe that these are the basics that each school should have and would like to bring all the rural schools at least up to this standard. 

Partners