First, thank you for reading this!

My name is Victoria, I'm 23 years old, from France but I'm actually living in Hikkaduwa, in Sri Lanka.

This is the story:

I have been studying Physiotherapy for 4 years, after that I was looking to take some time before starting the real active life. So I decided to go to Sri Lanka were I was supposed to stay 3 weeks.

But after those 3 weeks, I had the feeling I had to stay longer because my duty to Sri Lanka had not yet been realized. So I decided to spend the whole winter there.

This is how I arrived in Hikkaduwa, beach city on the west coast of Sri Lanka, which also been affected by the Tsunami on 2004.

After some weeks there and talking around with the local people, I finally heard about the Sambodhi Home. The day after I was on the way to with my local friend Sajith, (to help for the Sinhala translation), I was to curious to know about it.

I thought first it was an orphanage, but once I arrived I realized it was way much than I excepted.

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The Sambodhi Home was created 20 years ago, on the purpose to received disabled people which family couldn't take care of.

Today, there are 32 persons ( 31 woman, 1 men) and only 3 persons in charge of them. The people are affected physically or/and mentally, like Trisomie 21, Sclerosis, paraplegic.

The survival of the Home depend of the donation given by the local people (like rice, the) and tourist people who arrived until there.

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It's feel like it's a big Family, everybody help, the girls who can help at the Home to clean, cook and take care of the others. We were received with song and dance (what a great moment...).

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I discovered that the girls are super creative, they spend the day drawing, painting, making bracelet and neckless, they also do knitting. I was without voice when I see this woman drawing and knitting with her feet....

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We went to visit them an other day with my magic friend, Marvin Berenas, from Netherlands, it seem they really enjoyed it:

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I finally know the reason why I felt to stay, to give a little hand to those unique persons.

Today, the most important is to bring them what they really need like food and clothes, but in the future I would like to help them more as physiotherapist.

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Creativity, Fun and Joy for Disabled Sri Lankans

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