The Foundation of Goodness’ Good Life Institute launched its latest initiative, the Good Life Centre in September 2020 in the village of Kahawa, located in the Galle District. This is the first-ever Good Life Centre in Sri Lanka and will help develop marginalised children and youth in to successful and well-rounded citizens of tomorrow through a value based approach to development.

In line with the vision of the Good Life Institute, the Good Life Centre’s core focus is to inculcate good values in children from rural villages to be more responsible towards the community and environment. Alongside offering children support on school subjects, the Centre will deliver STEM education, an English Reading Programme, the Goodness Agriculture Initiative and the Children’s Good Values Initiative, free of cost (Visit the Foundation of Goodness website for more details about these programmes)

Striving in academic studies should go hand in hand with instilling good values into children’s lives from a very young age. The truth of the matter is, we now live in a world where parents and families have become nuclear due to their work schedules and other commitments. If a child is not able to imbibe the concept of “Goodness” from the time that they are aware of the surroundings and how to respond to it, their future path will have no real value. With this in mind, the Good Life Centre hopes to be a vehicle towards instilling a sense of empathy, integrity, and reliability amongst the youth of Sri Lanka so that they can take these skills into the adult world to make it better.

As the Founder of the Foundation of Goodness and the Good Life Institute, Mr. Kushil Gunasekera often says, “Education can make you rich, but values will make you happier”. The teachers and coordinators of the new Good Life Centre received a special training by Kushil Gunasekera, where he stressed on the importance of inculcating good values along with high quality education for the boys and girls in the rural village of Kahawa.

Since its inception last year, the Good Life Institute has developed and implemented various projects, notably the Good Life Experience – Better Than I Used To Be programme, MindShaper – What the Classroom Didn’t Teach, Planetary Health Education and the Children’s Good Values Initiative.

The Good Life Institute is an initiative of the Foundation of Goodness which has delivered humanitarian services aimed at bridging the urban/ rural divide for 21 years. The Foundation of Goodness flagship venue (The MCC Centre of Excellence and Sports Academy) is located in the village of Seenigama in Galle Districts and they also have 10 Village Heartbeat Empowerment Centres located around the island in the districts of Galle, Monaragala, Badulla, Ampara, Batticaloa, Anuradhapura, Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and Jaffna reaching 31,500+ beneficiaries from 400+ villages annually, free of cost. To learn more, visit: www.unconditionalcompassion.org