Pre-School

CFDC run a pre-school for children between the ages of 3-6, living in a slum of Colombo. The area is well known for drug and alcohol issues and provides very little support to children.

The school offers these under privileged children the best start before mainstream education, teaching them basic reading and writing skills together with life skills such as combing their hair, cleaning their faces and tying shoe laces, which normally children would learn at home.

The school cannot be compared to anything in the UK, the building has been granted use by the government over the next three years and although CFDC have invested money to make this space more comfortable, it is fairly basic and not equipped with computers or other learning facilities. We have recently acquired a DVD player and a cassette player, which are used towards the end of the day in the children’s wind down zone.

The school currently accommodates 42 children but is greatly in demand. Parents are keen to send their children to our school as they see this as the only way of giving them a good enough start to get out of the slum. The area is heavily populated with a large number of children, so there is a potential to increase school numbers. Unfortunately we are unable to meet this growing demand due to funding constraints.