Our Second Project
Supporting the little ones in Kilinochchi, Sri-Lanka
The Little Things completed the eye clinic in July 2015 and swiftly moved onto deciding the second project. Rathaven flew off to Sri Lanka in September 2015 with two other volunteers. After deciding to focus on the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, Rathaven and his team he spoke with regional health directors and hospital directors. After assessing several hospitals and their needs, The Little Things decided to support Kilinochchi District General Hospital. In Kilinochchi, they had been allocated funds to start building a premature baby clinic. What the Director asked us, was to donate the medical equipment needed to sustain and save the lives of the premature babies.
We planned to raise the funds for the premature baby clinic by repeating our skydive, we ran a continuous 18-hour charity football match, more bucket collections, and in addition to all of this we also organised our first international fundraising event - a trek of Machu Picchu in Peru.
All of these fundraising events enabled us to purchase the following equipment for the premature baby clinic in Kilinochchi District General Hospital:
High-frequency ventilator with online UPS
High flow nasal cannula therapy
Bubble CPAP with accessories
2 x LED phototherapy unit
The above equipment was purchased from Premium International for approximately 6.3 million Sri Lankan rupees. Premium International is a Colombo-based medical equipment distributor. The decision to purchase the necessary equipment from one supplier came after facing significant difficulty in coordinating the delivery of the equipment for the eye clinic in Arusha, Tanzania. Engineers from Premium International were responsible for the installation of the medical equipment.
The premature baby clinic project was completed in July 2016. Again, Rathaven along with two volunteers flew out to Sri Lanka, to oversee the completion of the project and film a documentary to showcase the completion of the project.