By Danielle Beurteaux
They saw houses flattened, fishing boats flipped on their sides, and people who had lost everything but the clothes they were wearing waiting for help by the side of the road.
Days after the 2004 tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia, killing some 230,000 people, S.P. "Wije" Wijegoonaratna drove with his father around the coast of Galle—the district his family comes from in Sri Lanka—and witnessed the chaos firsthand. After Indonesia, the country was the worst hit, with more than 35,000 deaths, 100,000 homes destroyed and more than half a million people made homeless. In Galle, on Sri Lanka's southwest coast, more than 128,000 people were displaced. "We talked to as many people as we could," says Wijegoonaratna, who has lived in New York for 20 years but visits Sri Lanka at least twice a year. "We saw the destruction."
Wijegoonaratna, who will be 45 in April, is the founder, chief executive and chief investment officer of Galle Global Macro Partners and a former manager with Fortress Investment Group. He launched Galle in February, and the firm managed $215 million in assets as of press time. Initially, Wijegoonaratna had thought of building a few houses. But he realized the damage was much worse than he had imagined—and the task ahead would be much more complex. "I didn't have an idea at the time," says Wijegoonaratna. "I was just interested in figuring out how we could help. We saw the most visible hardship was that people had lost their homes."
There was no relief entity offering to help rebuild, says Wijegoonaratna, and the government was focused on its long-running war with the Tamil Tigers. To avoid corruption and bureaucracy, he decided the direct route was the best option to help survivors. He founded Sri Lanka Care in February 2005 and partnered with Hathbodhi Rajamaha Viharya, a local social services organization, to help coordinate and monitor the foundation as it rebuilt Sri Lanka's villages, house by house. As luck would have it, Wijegoonaratna's father, Sri Nihal Wijegoonaratna, is a retired engineer. He's been instrumental in running the construction projects. "I think I have a great son," he says. "It got to him that we have to help the poorest of the poor. We are privileged people. And when you have, you must give some away."
They began with three communities in Galle, building houses that were designed to be scalable, inexpensive, and practical. The elder Wijegoonaratna designed a foundation that would remain stable on the marshy land the floodwaters left behind. Each house costs around $5,000 and takes 6 to 8 weeks to build. The houses are a huge improvement over the hastily improvised post-tsunami shacks, often made with scavenged bits and pieces, where these families were living. So far, 252 houses have been completed, though Sri Lanka Care has a list of 1,000 families who have applied for assistance.
Houses are just the beginning, says Wijegoonaratna, who adds that establishing education funding is Sri Lanka Care's next goal. "We fundamentally believe that if we provide the security of a house, the parents are more likely to think about sending their children to school," he says. "The ultimate goal is education, because without that, we aren't going to make any difference."