`No Kunu’ – how Sumi Moonesinghe galvanized a clean-up movement

by Shehara de Silva

(Continued from last week)

There are so many times I have seen Sumi in a boardroom or at work, where she is like a force of nature. She is like a battering ram who insists on having her way and on getting things done. She is relentless. It was thus amazing to see her sensitive, understated and soft side, as she mellowed in age, towards her less-advantaged school friends, relatives and a plethora of causes she championed. It was in this phase of her life that our lives interfaced again decades later.

In 2018, 1 received a call out of the blue. Sumi had come a full circle and was on a roll again. By now, in her 70s, she still had that incredible tenacity and drive. She called me from one of her famous power walks near Independence Square where she walked regularly and met a motley array of the high and mighty, commanders, politicians and chairmen of companies and State institutions. The good, the bad and the ugly had all come under her ring of influence.

In one of those famous epiphanies she was wont to have, she had decided on cleaning up the banks of the Beira Lake and then the canals and roads around Colombo. Unable or unwilling to get home and start the process, she called me from Independence Square and asked me to create a brand and a concept!

In the next few days, she had moved mountains. I got calls around three or four times a day and a dozen WhatsApp texts in-between with ideas, instructions and additional companies that were joining in, even before the concept was crystallized. This was the birth of the ‘No Kunu’ movement she founded. She raised her clarion call for action in the ‘No Kunu’ pledge, in which each person and company that comes on board becomes the guardian of the city, forest or beach they pledge to protect. The vision that I helped her draft was to build a system of civic engagement that would help Sri Lanka become the cleanest country in Asia.

Within a week she had roped in big guns. Kumar Sangakkara gave a video message that went viral. Ven. Galboda Gnanissara, or Podi Hamuduruwo as he is better known, of Gangaramaya Temple had a large power base that was mobilised. Rosy Senanayake, her former face of Anchor and now Mayor of Colombo, pledged teams of planners, engineers and street cleaners. The Navy added boats, rigs and suction devices. Her A Team of former sales and marketing personnel were her work horses, and soon Sumi’s home was a war room of experts and benefactors.

Municipal engineers, corporate CSR and HR heads – big and small, Sumi collected them all! JKH, DIMO, Aitken Spence, Virtusa, NTB, NDB, Worldlink, Coca-Cola and Shangri-La were a part of some 30-plus leading corporates in her fold. She added some national and international schools as well as the Rotary Clubs to boot. The media joined in with Daily FT, Derana, Rupavahini and Roar publishing regular features to educate the public.

A concept of stewardship and continuous education was put in place. “Don’t just clean up and forget about a space; be a guardian!”

One Galle Face was an early pledger, taking over Galled Face Green and promising to ensure an ongoing cleaning system, after the Colombo society ladies and their offspring, after some arm twisting by Sumi, were made to come in and do an initial clean-up. Two thousand five hundred slums were cleaned, dwellers educated and trained on waste disposal, while plastic buckets for collection and cloth bags for shopping were donated. Canals were dredged.

On May 19, 2018, the first programme was launched from Layards Broadway in Grandpas and the second from Leslie Ranagala Mawatha in Wanathamulla, Boreal. The third was at Kew Road in Slave Island, and then later Muttiah Park. In July 2018, the Rotaract Club of the University of Moratuwa together with the Interact Club of D.S. Senanayake College and Rotary Club of Colombo West volunteered, and a whole spate of corporates that were spread around the lake were mobilized to clean the three-kilometre Beira Lake Walkway on D R Wijewardena Mawatha. The project continued downstream on the Wellawatte Canal, right down to Horton Place and on and on.

Taking inspiration from the 2018 Football World Cup and the Japanese, who despite defeat cleaned up their locker rooms to zero trash, Sumi commandeered the 140-year-old Royal Thomian Cricket Match, a bastion of male entitlement of “doing it their way” to “do it her way”! I recall trudging around talking to the organising committee, setting in place a vendor guideline and a system for the junior school to follow a zero trash policy on ground. Sumi had managed to get the organizers to rope in the primary school young ones in a ‘catch them young’ strategy to build a future generation of waste-conscious leaders. However, we realized the old Mustangs were possibly beyond the pale of reform and their inebriation would not allow for rational civic behaviour!

Sumi said it best in a newspaper interview in the Daily FT: “Eventually one city at a time, we will move from city to village, to beach, to forest and farm, from house to house, shop to shop and company to company. We will teach everyone how to separate their garbage. We will mobilize company workforces to help clean our country. We will co-opt 1,500 business leaders to pledge to be guardians of our cities and mobilize their resources and workforces to help demonstrate, clean-up, reiterate, resource and monitor a programme to keep Colombo Clean first. Then every city, river, beach and forest and wherever possible to convert ‘kunu’ into a valuable resource.”

Sumi’s energy and attempts to muster her power and wealth to help the country and the less privileged is worth a record as a study in moral leadership and the evolution of a corporate leader to one of a philanthropist. ‘No Kunu,’ while gaining traction and momentum, took a back seat as the Easter bombings and later the pandemic put the brakes on mobilizing civil society for common good. However, Sumi has soldiered on relentlessly with other social impacts.

Her Atoka foundation began feeding the poor in the plantations. Hatton station was a kick-off point partly because her driver Kumar, her factotum and Chief of Staff, was from a Hatton plantation. She had enabled, trusted and empowered Kumar, who, over time, turned out to be a multi-talented and incredible implementer and organizer, fit to sit on any crisis team or 100-day task force. The moulding of Kumar and unleashing his potential is in itself a study of how trust and gratitude coupled with empowerment, can bring out hidden potential in the most unexpected persons.

Meanwhile, the Atoka charity looked at building interfaith and inter community harmony and environment healing. Mainly using her personal funds, Sumi looked at how systemic change could be brought to the plantation worker. In tandem, she began another ambitious programme – to plant 25 million trees all over the country. Talk about thinking big!

For symbolic reasons, the ‘No Kunu’ and Aloka citizens’ initiatives were launched at the Gangarama Temple by Ven. Assaji on July 1, 2019. Barely three weeks on, the first major event was conceived and rolled out, planting jak trees from Hatton to Nallathanni along the Maskeliya-Mousakelle Road beginning at Hatton Railway Station. Maskeliya Plantations took the lead, while the Station Master and staff of Hatton CGR, head priests of the Buddhist temples, mosque, kovil and the church were all present.

In hindsight, it is such a pity for Sri Lanka that Sumi did not go into active politics, bar the support she gave her husband Susil in his ambitions as a politician.

As I reminisce about Sumi and see her from the spectrum of my association, first as an employee, later as a friend, a mentor and a co-conspirator of civic engagement, I have seen a mother, wife, stepmother, political animal, social activist and a true friend. I have seen a hard nosed and self-made business woman who took the knocks of life, rode the crest of success and moved with the richest of the rich moguls of commerce, yet never forgot her beginnings or who she met on her way. Yet, above all, she learned to forget and forgive the pain of the past, over which she had no control.

Sumi has taught me much. Mostly that no matter how heavy the challenges we face in life, we must act with tenacity and courage; that we must never lose hope. She understood that we are all accountable and MUST give back to each other.

If one believes in `samsara’ – the journey of life – as I know Sumi does, we live in but a glitch in time. The good we do always outlives us, it plays to the rhythm of a timeless, selfless love. This is Sumi’s heartbeat. The love of a citizen for her nation and her community.

Shehara de Silva is a Non-Executive Director of Keells Food and the former Marketing Director at New Zealand Milk Products (Sri Lanka).