Rev. Dr. Selvadurai Jeyanesan, a minister with the Church of South India, introduced Eric Parkinson to Trincomalee in late 2001. The port town of Trincomalee accurately reflected the poverty that had plagued the island nation’s northeast for decades. “Trinco,” as it's known, is a district and town offering a rare Sri Lankan integration of Sinhalese Buddhists, Tamil Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others.

Parkinson first heard “Rev. Jey” tell American audiences of the conditions threatening much of Sri Lanka’s population: Poverty, ethnic tensions and 20 years of civil war left the north and east regions in desperate shape. By then, the war had taken more than 60,000 Sri Lankan lives, and the conflict was far from over. In 1983 the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam launched a war that many say had its origins decades earlier, with tensions between the largely northern-living minority (less than 20 percent of the population) Tamils and the majority Sinhalese, who lived mostly in the commercial and industry centers of the south.

To read a brief history of Sri Lanka, please click here.

The civil war, considered one of Asia’s bloodiest and among the longest-running conflicts in the world, left much of the northeast in ruins. In late 2001, Parkinson visited Trincomalee to see for himself the many needs of the region, chief among them orphanages capable of welcoming the war’s littlest survivors, the children who lost fathers and family to the conflict, and had few or no options for survival.

Built on seven acres of beachfront property, the Grace Care Center opened in August 2002, welcoming the first dozen children to populate Grace Home. The Center’s developing programs – a daycare center for nearby preschoolers from refugee families, vocational training for teens and young adults, and Mercy Home, a residence for destitute senior citizens – were designed to operate under VeAhavta’s vision of integrating people of different ethnic and religious groups in order to help foster mutual understanding and, in some small way, contribute to the Sri Lankan peace process.

For more information on the many faces of Grace, please visit the pages for the following programs:

• Grace Home Housing more than 80 girls age 5 – 17, Grace home provides quarters, clothing, meals and transportation to school, along with tutoring, playtime and what they needed most, a sense of home and family.

• Grace Daycare – A daycare program provides services for children, ages 3-5, living in camps for IDPs ("Internally Displaced Persons") and fishing villages near Grace, providing a nutritious meal, educational opportunities and allowing parents the time to earn an income or search for employment.

• Grace Vocational Training Center – Through the Grace VTC, VeAhavta can provide needy students with vocational training as a long-term solution to combating the devastating effects of poverty. A dormitory allows students from outside the Trincomalee area to benefit from the program.

• Mercy Home – Through Mercy Home, VeAhavta is providing, full-time residential nursing home care for up to 82 destitute senior citizens – the abandoned of society from all ethnic groups, castes and religions who, if not cared for, would spend the end of their lives mired in loneliness, pain and sorrow.