Come with me and I will show you my home.

The development of the Little Smile Association (LSA) results from an aid project for Singhalese and Tamil children in need founded by Michael Kreitmeir. Since 2002 the children’s aid organization is officially registered as a local non-governmental organization in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, LSA gets support in terms of organization and coordination by the German non-profit organization Little Smile e. V.

The main project, children’s village Little Smile Koslanda in the mountains of Sri Lanka, was started in 1999, funded and built by TV journalist and director Michael Kreitmeir. Since then it has been enlarged continuously. Today it comprises six children houses, working quarters, a school, a training centre, a sewing school, a Buddhist temple and Hindu Kovil, a Virgin Mary chapel, two houses for widows with children, a guest house, staff quarters, a hospital ward with traditional medicine, a traditional meeting house, extensive plantations for pepper, vanilla, cinnamon as well as rice and vegetable fields for Little Smile’s own consumption. The children’s village has an area of 15 hectares with a height difference of 120 meters and a maximum length of 2 kilometers.

It includes also a home for boys and a nature reserve, which has become a retreat for species like wild elephants and the very rare leopards.

The tsunami catastrophe and its results have changed life in and around the children’s village Little Smile a lot. Many time and energy has been spent in the tsunami aid projects, but – of course – without neglecting the work for and with the children.

After the emergency support, houses for tsunami victims have been built between 2005 and 2010. Furthermore, there was help for self-help provided with boat projects for fishermen in the East and South of the country, and Little Smile has renovated schools, built new kindergartens and supported many village communities with things such as the construction of community halls or temples. 2006 then the centre for traditional medicine was opened in Buttala and 2007 a school and a training centre in Galle. And in January 2010, handing over the building of the Ashraff Memorial hospital in Kalmunai at the East coast, Little Smile could finish its last direct tsunami project.

2011 Little Smile concentrated once again stronger on its work with children and assumed financial responsibility for the girls’ home in Monaragala and Badulla.

Altogether, these are 6 children’s homes in Sri Lanka for which Little Smile is responsible for in 2011.

To be able to give children and young people access to education, particularly those from problem areas far away of the country’s major centers, Little Smile built an international school.

On 5 October 2010, the Maria-Theresia college could be inaugurated on the East coast.

At the end of 2011 still under construction are:

- a meeting centre in Pilane near Galle

- the expansion of the boys home Poonagala

- the complete renovation of the girls home near Batticaloa

Planned are:

- a boarding and educational centre for organic farming in Dikkapitia

- the expansion of the centre for traditional medicine in Buttala

- the construction of a children’s home near Nikapotha

- the construction of a warehouse in the children’s village Mahagedara near Koslanda

Please see the latest news in brief (status: end of November 2011)