DALLAS (ABP) — The government of Sri Lanka has invited a Texas Baptist agency to shape the country's first child protective services program, with the man who got the group involved in January's tsunami-relief efforts taking the lead.
David Beckett, who was instrumental in connecting both Texas Baptist Men and Baptist Child and Family Services to victims of the disaster, has been named Sri Lanka director for Children's Emergency Relief International, the overseas arm of the child-welfare agency. In that role, he has already started responding to requests from national and provincial administrators to shape a program to provide long-term care for children who lost one or both parents to the killer wave.
“Initial estimates of 10,000 orphans were significantly overstated, but there are still hundreds — maybe thousands — of children at risk. And the Sri Lankan officials are to be commended not only for responding to the immediate pressing needs, but for being forward-looking enough to seek a permanent solution to the ongoing needs of children that will last long after the horror of Dec. 26 fades,” Beckett said. “Many of the orphans predate the tsunami. They are victims of a civil war that started 20 years ago.”
Since CERI was the only aid group in Sri Lanka with foster-care expertise, the San Antonio-based agency found itself unexpectedly sitting at the table with government officials and representatives of larger agencies, like UNICEF, Save the Children, the Red Cross and World Vision.
“There was an understandable fear by Sri Lankan officials, who wanted to know who we were [and] what we did, but we quickly formed some great relationships,” Beckett explained. “The Sri Lankan people love children, so we had that in common. When I had my first meeting with the provincial [commissioner] she told me that two days before she had told her co-workers, 'We have to set up some kind of foster program, but how can we do that since we don't have anyone who knows how?' We developed a solid friendship very quickly.”
In April, CERI will begin a pilot program with approximately 50 children in the area around the coastal city of Batticaloa. Both groups have concentrated their relief efforts in that hard-hit region.
“The government has already invited us to go into three others provinces, but we want to make sure we are doing the right things in the right way before we accept that invitation,” Beckett explained. “The urgency of the first weeks has been eased because all the children have been placed with extended family or friends. What we will be doing is organizing a system that will provide support for those children and their caregivers along with counseling services and a structure to insure the children are treated safely.”
CERI also has been asked to train government social workers who will staff the program.
Beckett projects building several “camp facilities” that can provide day care and summer programs — providing relief for the foster parents. “The families who are caring for them need time to put their own lives back together and resume their jobs,” he said. “This will free them to do that as well as offer the children educational, recreational and counseling programs.”
Beckett, his wife, Kim, and their four-year-old daughter, Eva, had made the permanent move to Sri Lanka exactly one week before the tsunami hit. In fact, they spent Christmas day at the beach near Colombo, “just relaxing and enjoying the country.” They took a haunting photo of Eva, standing in profile on the sand, a brightly colored fishing boat and the brilliant blues of the sky and the water behind her.
Less than 24 hours later the country's beaches, including the one where they relaxed, were littered with an estimated 30,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of shattered homes and businesses.
Beckett, who as a member of Curry Creek Baptist Church in Boerne, Texas, had worked on disaster-relief teams with the Texas Baptist Men, put in a call to the TBM to see if they could help. Then when the first reports of numerous orphans were broadcast, Kim reminded David of his trip to Moldova with CERI and how impressed he had been with CERI's work setting up that country's foster-care program.
When the government said they would welcome that help, he called Kevin Dinnin, the director of BCFS/CERI and five days later a CERI team was on the ground assessing child-care needs.
The Beckett family flew back to Sri Lanka March 24 after a three-week crash course in child care in San Antonio. David Beckett experienced the whole spectrum of BCFS child care, including foster care, emergency shelters, intervention programs and counseling.
Beckett and BCFS administrators spent long hours crafting procedures and guidelines for the program that would maintain the ability to take care of the children while being culturally appropriate for the religiously diverse Asian country.
That task was enhanced considerably by the involvement of Janet Perera, a Sri Lankan who has lived in the United States for 20 years. She is a counselor with the Dallas Independent School District and got her counseling certification at Dallas Baptist University.
She was in the country for Christmas when the tsunami hit, but was already flying home when the government announced it was ready to enlist counselors. Frustrated, Perera contacted another agency that was sending a counseling team, but was told since she wasn't a member of the organization she couldn't go. Instead “they sent a group who had no knowledge of the people or the country,” she said.
Faculty at DBU referred her to Texas Baptist Men who, in turn, put her in touch with CERI/BCFS.
“I'm very impressed with what CERI is putting together,” she said. “Everyone is so dedicated to doing the best for the children, and that includes knowing what will work in the culture and what won't. But they are going to be able to do a lot of good.”
“We learned early on that we weren't very good at seeing where our involvement in Sri Lanka would lead,” Dinnin said. “God continues to open new doors to help children and families and to bring amazing people, like David and Kim, into our ministries.
“We're just going to try to be faithful to his leadership and to be good stewards of the resources Texas Baptists and our other friends have given us to invest in Sri Lanka. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.”