Little Smile Children's Village, located in the mountains near Koslanda was started in 1999 and mainly funded and built by TV journalist and director Michael Kreitmeir. Michael had to give up his work as Film-maker, and even his life in Germany, to be able to face the tremendous challenges of building Little Smile. Since work first began on Little Smile, the project has continued to develop and expand over the years..
Little Smile serves not only as an orphanage, but as a home to Tamil and Sinhalase children of all faiths, including Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Islam. The village includes five children’s homes, a service building, a school, a training workshop, a sewing school, a carpentry, a Buddhist and a Hindu temple, a guest house, a house for traditional medicine, houses for the employees, a traditional meeting house and huge plantations for spices and fruit. In the first five years LSA focused on building and expanding the children’s village.
In March 2005, Fred Breedlove accompanied a group of tsunami-affected children from Kalmunai to Little Smile to give them a much needed break from the devastated area where many of the children lost family members. Also included in the group were volunteers from AERO (Ampara Economic Recovery Organization) where Fred was volunteering, and several local school teachers from Kalmunai. During Fred's mission trips to Kalmunai in 2005, he also worked with Michael Kreitmeir on tsunami relief projects designed to help get people back to work. On one of these projects, Fred wrote project plans and funding proposals for a fishing boat business that Michael was collaborating with Dr Raeez, founder of AERO. Fred also helped AERO to start a non-profit engineering/construction group committed to putting local craftsmen (masons, electricians, carpenters, welders, plumbers, etc) back to work on construction projects designed to help Sri Lanka recover from the tsunami of December 26, 2004. One of the most important projects in 2005 was the building of a Children's Ward at the Ashraff Memorial Hospital (in Kalmunai), which was finally completed in 2010.
Michael Kreitmeir's Story:
IT ALL BEGAN WITH A PROMISE It began with my wish to show my son, Manuel, then nine years old, a completely different world, a long way away from all that he was used to in Bavaria. This voyage of discovery together took father and son not to hotels and beaches but into remote regions of Sri Lanka. We saw a great deal in those four months, but this adventure eventually turned out to be the hour of birth of Little Smile.
We were walking in the highlands not far from the town of Haputale. A woman had discovered us on a narrow path through endless tea plantations and "carried us off" to her remote village. She wanted me to take a photograph of her daughter, because already two of her children had died without there being a single picture to remind her of them. We went into one of the nameless dwellings, three long buildings, very dilapidated, in which the tea-pickers lived with their families. There was no water and no electricity and not even a single chair in the village. The children there were amazed: most of them had never seen a white person before. In actual fact they were particularly excited by the white person in miniature with blond hair and blue eyes.. Children don't necessarily need language in order to understand one another, so Manuel was soon playing hide-and-seek with the dark-skinned children. I soon noticed a girl, about 11 years old, very thin, full of scars, wearing only a torn shirt. She was very shy. One could really sense that she very much wanted to join in. She finally gave herself a push and ran along with the other children.
I became increasingly uneasy waiting for the young woman whom I was to photograph, because it was the rainy season and we could expect heavy clouds and rain in the afternoon, which would make it impossible for us to go back. At long last a woman came back from working in the tea plantations. But she just looked at me curiously. Almost at that moment the shy girl rushed past us. A little later I was shocked to hear cries from a child, unlike anything I had ever heard before. I ran to the other end of the long building and saw the woman beating the girl, who was lying on the floor, with a cinnamon stick. I intervened straight away - horrified and angry as I was. The situation became chaotic. Men and women came running. I understood very little Tamil then and it was only the woman who had brought me along who was eventually able, with some difficulty, to explain what was happening. The girl who had been subject to abuse was not the woman's daughter but rather an orphan, whom the woman had bought for a small sum of money. The woman cried out indignantly that the child was supposed to work, not to play. But the child had been playing and was now getting the appropriate punishment. No-one seemed to see that the girl was being beaten almost to death for absolutely NOTHING. After all, she was only an orphan.
Manuel and I had to spend the whole night in a tiny room in the long building because it had begun to rain heavily. We couldn't sleep because we were kept awake by what we had experienced and the quiet whimpering of the unhappy child.
That night I promised my son that we would do something for this child. I wanted to buy her in the morning and find a good place for her. We went along in the morning absolutely determined to fetch the child. But she was dead. No-one in the village understood our horror and outrage. The girl was only an orphan.
I was no longer able to keep the promise I made to my son regarding this unhappy child without a name. But this experience was to change our lives. For months I searched throughout Sri Lanka for a project for orphans which I could support. I visited a large number of orphanages. It was a very sobering journey. Several times I paid dearly for the lessons which I learnt in my attempts to help. In the end I brought myself to decide to create a place for these children myself. I was only able to do this with the support of my friends and by committing a great deal of time and money and all my energy to the project.
Fred continues to stay in touch with Michael Kreitmeir, and was able to visit Little Smile for the second time in 2007 when he was also fortunate to finally meet his son, Manuel, during an overnight visit at Little Smile. Work at Little Smile never ends...the children grow up and are replaced by even more children who are given a new life filled with love and care by their new family at Little Smile Children's Village. Some of the children choose to stay and work at Little Smile after they grow up so they can help other unfortunate children of Sri Lanka.