As part of a cooperative project with the Department of Education for Sustainable Development of the District Office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Kalpitiya, District Councilor Oliver Schruoffeneger, district employee Christin Heda, Michael Böker, along with seven students from Friedensburg Secondary School, and Detlef Wingerath from Nelson Mandela School with students Marlene Rottkamp, Merit Opgen-Rhein, Ruby Belasco New, Leandra Ziche, Angelina Parchomenko Curvello, Lydia Martinelli, and Johannes Weckert, traveled to Sri Lanka from October 27 to November 8, 2024.
Dilsiri Welikala from Kite Surfing Lanka hosted us with impressive hospitality. Thakeisha de Silva coordinated and supervised the trip on site. We visited the Muslim School in Kandakuliya, the St. Sebastian School in Kandakuliya, St. Anne’s School in Thalawila, and the Sinhala Mune School. The aim was to initiate school partnership projects together with around 20 local students and four teachers.
One especially moving cultural exchange was the joint visit to Sigiriya, often called the “Lion Rock” – an important cultural monument in Sri Lanka and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The guided safari through Wilpattu National Park, led by Prof. Sampath Seneviratne from the University of Colombo, where animal tracks were documented, was an impressive experience for all.
The art workshops, led by Dilsiri Welikala, Poornima Jayasinghe, and Chinthaka Thenuwara from Colombo, focused on the reuse of plastic waste to develop sustainable ideas collaboratively. This effort culminated in a parade through Kalpitiya. The film and photography presentations on the themes of microplastics, marine protection, and environmental pollution, conducted by Jan Ramesh de Saram from the Goethe Institute in Colombo, illustrated the alarming extent of the waste problem.
We successfully organized a reflection workshop as well as a joint singing and dancing session with all teachers and students and conducted a beach cleanup. The next steps for continued cooperation within the framework of Education for Sustainable Development were outlined and sketched into school partnership projects.