About ourselves

Satyodaya

The Satyodaya Centre for Social Research and Encounter (to give it its full name) is a People’s Organization with three components, all equally important:

(i) the work of research, documentation, enhancing social awareness, conducted at the Centre itself, and powerfully assisted by an excellent, specialized and well-catalogued library;

(ii) the life of sharing and community among persons of different languages, religions, ethnic groups, sexes, cultures so that it can now honestly ask, If at Satyodaya, why not elsewhere?;

(iii) field work among the people on the estates and in the adjacent villages in the plantation areas of our country mainly in the Central Province, which is the heart of our plantation system.

Satyodaya Main Building

Some of our Members

THE STRUCTURE OF SATYODAYA

Field Programme Coordination Unit (under field Programme Co-ordinator)

Administration Unit (under General Administrator)

Satyodaya Centre (under General Administrator)

Finance Unit (under Treasurer)

Research & Documentation Unit (under Researcher-in-chief)

Satyodaya Jana Seva Farm (SJS) (under Farm Management)

Beginnings

Saturday, 11 February 1972, the day Satyodaya was born. Bishop Leo Nanayakkara, o.s.b. (then Bishop of Kandy), Fr Bill Moran (Provincial of the Jesuits), Fr Wilfred Munatunga (Superior of Lewella), Mrs Fernando and Mrs Agres Antony (our neighbours), Aaron (Fr Paul’s faithful friend from St Aloysius’ College), and a few well-wishers met for a prayer service and the traditional boiling of milk in a clay pot. There were beads of sweat on some of us. Was there too little fire or too little milk?… Would it ever overflow? But Aaron kept stoking the fire, and the milk finally flowed over the mouth of the pot.

This was much like a prophecy of the next years, 1972 – 2000: hope in the midst of struggle, doubt, anxiety, pain of mind and heart as our plantation people suffered in terrible communal riots, but also great joy, when the eyes of human persons, especially the children, glistened with gratitude for whatever we ever able to do for them in cooperation with them. Yet we have no illusions. The struggle will go on until at last, the Dawn, Udaya, of Truth, Satya and Justice, rises again, never again to see the night.

About Satyodaya, Contact us, Our Mission, Our Publications, Field work, Working Areas, Galaha, Matale, Pussellawa, Nawalapitiya, Kegalle, Kandy, Sixteen Plus (16+.), Working for the Poorest

last Updated January 29, 2004

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