The Friends of Sunera Foundation was a UK-based charitable trust (number 1118536) started in 2006 with one aim – to raise funds for Sunera Foundation in Sri Lanka. From then until 2017, FSF was always our biggest supporter – true ‘Friends of Sunera.’ Through their commitment and dedication over the years, FSF raised a phenomenal amount of money in support of our work. This has been the backbone of our existence.

The FSF’s key focus areas included:

• Raising awareness in the UK of the impressive and unique work of Sunera Foundation.
• Raising funds to support both the core work of Sunera, and specific projects for which the Foundation seeks our help.
• Helping people to travel from UK to Sri Lanka to offer their talents and energies to the growth and betterment of Sunera.

Over the years, FSF funds supported all aspects of SF’s activities. This included paying for:

• Head Office activities, such as the costs of the publicity officer for a couple of years, and providing funds for specific items such as drawing equipment, sound-systems, and cameras.
• At different times, the majority of our workshops.
• The Provincial Newsletters from the very beginning, including the Tamil versions.
• T-shirts for our trainers and participants.
• Training of Trainers programmes
• Two programmes of speech and language therapy, helping us to explore new ways of working with our young people.

Under the heading of ‘helping people to travel to Sri Lanka to offer their talents and energies to Sunera’, FSF worked with RADA (the London-based Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) on a very successful programme to send two students for four weeks in Sri Lanka in the summer of 2012, working at different workshops across the country. FSF’s Field Officer- Alison Skilbeck (a well-known actress and director, and a FSF Trustee), spent altogether at least sixteen weeks in Sri Lanka in four visits across eleven years: she worked with trainers and in workshops, she advised on training schemes, and generally supported the technical side of developing participants’ artistic expression.

FSF resorted to numerous ways of raising money to do all this. The single most important category was making applications to UK-based grant-giving trusts, whose generosity enabled FSF to be much more ambitious in its help to SF. The next most important source was FSF supporters: FSF had a database of some 100 people who sent donations (monthly or annually); many of them also responded generously to appeals for specific projects. Some individual supporters held fund-raisers of their own, and sent us generous cheques. Under the Gift Aid scheme, the UK government granted FSF a further 25% of these donations from the tax that the donors paid. FSF’s Treasurer, Rosalind Griffin, got married in 2014 and asked her friends to donate to FSF rather than give her presents; her parents, Sue Griffin (FSF Chair) and her husband Rod had a similar arrangement for their 50th wedding anniversary. Every year, at least one Quaker group sent FSF a generous sum.

And then there were public events organised by FSF itself, usually with help from others (FSF had no staff or premises). Over the years, FSF Trustee Alison Skilbeck and her husband Tim Hardy (who is also an actor) raised thousands of pounds for FSF from special performances; in 2007, they organized a weekend of one-person plays at a London theatre. Jewellery-makers Rashantha Devanesan (2014, 2015, and 2017) and Barbara Flynn (2006 and 2012) organized several sales of their work over the years; Jack Pollitt got together some of his friends (all of them well-known professional musicians) for a rock concert in 2007: Victoria Brignell (who had never acted before in her life) performed a 40-minute monologue in 2015; Heather Mayall celebrated a significant birthday with a sponsored bike-ride across the south of England in 2010. Finally, there were two classical music concerts: one in 2008 with Mandhira de Saram and the Oxford Opera Company and the Christchurch Festival Orchestra, and another with Danielle De Niese and Rohan da Silva in 2012.

Altogether, these events and appeals, small and large, raised over £125,000 for Sunera—over 35.2m SLR at today’s exchange rate!

Having worked tirelessly to give us immense support through years of friendship, Friends of Sunera Foundation (FSF) officially wound up operations in 2017. However, as private individuals, the former FSF Trustees continue to support us in numerous way with much dedication. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Sunera’s physical workshops had to remain closed, they supported us with funding for a story-book distribution-project to keep our participants engaged and help them stay focused while they are confined to their homes.

Hon. President	Sunethra Bandaranaike
Patrons	Lady Ayckbourn Victoria Brignell Jonathan Steele
Trustees	Sue Griffin JP (Chair) Rosalind Griffin (Treasurer) Susan Hoyle (Secretary) Liz Philipson Alison Skilbeck