After see­ing news reports of the dev­as­tat­ing tsunami that hit Sri Lanka five years ago, Cavan Sul­li­van was deter­mined to help in some way. Sul­li­van made the New Year’s res­o­lu­tion to build a house for a fam­ily there. Five years later, the house has been built but Sullivan’s char­ity to the peo­ple of Sri Lanka has not stopped.

From the Wales Online, writer Cathy Owen tells us more about Sullivan’s adventures.

The house, which cost £1,900 to build and fur­nish, is in a tiny remote vil­lage, five kilo­me­tres inland on the banks of a river, close to a town called Hikkaduwa in the south west of Sri Lanka. The vil­lage was dev­as­tated as the killer wave rushed up the river dev­as­tat­ing areas in its path. The house is now home to the Lounaris fam­ily – Sam­ina, who at the time was aged four, and her grand­fa­ther and grandmother.

It was all paid for by Cavan, friends and cus­tomers of his double-glazing firm, Welsh Win­dows. He also pro­vided cur­tains for the house, a bike for Samina’s grand­fa­ther, and set up a fund so Sam­ina can be edu­cated to uni­ver­sity age.

“She may not want to go to uni­ver­sity, but a least she has the oppor­tu­nity,” said Cavan, who also pays for the fam­ily to buy Sam­ina milk.

“They had very lit­tle when the tsunami struck and they lost everything.”

He was going to end it there but dur­ing their trip, Cavan vis­ited a school and saw that the major­ity of chil­dren didn’t have any shoes.

That was it, he couldn’t stop with just a house. He had to do more and set about rais­ing money to buy shoes for the chil­dren. He con­tacted some of those friends who helped him raise money and many chil­dren received shoes for the first time in their lives.

Much of the ini­tial fundrais­ing was done by Cavan, Debra, their daugh­ter Aimee and her friend Nichola Adams. It snow­balled from there and the char­ity has a board of trustees, includ­ing fel­low Barry busi­ness­man Andy Rogers. Last month, Cavan and Andy trav­elled to Sri Lanka to see how the charity’s money is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.
…

They held a Christ­mas party for 300 of the poor­est chil­dren and organ­ised a five-a-side foot­ball tour­na­ment. The trip also included a visit to a school that was built 98 years ago but never had elec­tric­ity. The HAT Foun­da­tion paid £720 to change all that and now the chil­dren have fans, lights and sockets.

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