BETA

Dear Editor,

There is no argument that Tamil live in UK should do more and could do more to support our society in UK and in Sri Lanka but one think everyone should understand that not every Tamil can provide same level of support or commitment. This is due to practical difficulties. Those practical difficulties are work, family, geographical location, etc. However, I believe that everyone will be able to find at least 2 hours per week to contribute for our community service such as involved in peaceful protests, supporting our youngsters, organising sport events, organising charity events, etc. Two hours per week look small but if you multiply this by 40,000 (approximately numbers of adult in our community in UK), we have 80, 000 hours per week; this is a huge amount of man power but the question is how can we utilise this?

I always think that creating Jewish style of community centres near to our people and then linking them will provide a greater unification and will provide platform for utilising the man power, regular communications, update, etc. Like when a Christian move to an area they register with Church and Tamil move a new area should register with the near by community centre and attend to monthly meeting or receive news letter.

The reason for I request the Jewish style community centre is half of our population generally do not receive the information and not sure how they can help to others and themselves. The community centre not necessarily talk about our straggle and organising protests, they can also involved in local politics, providing local information to those in the area, arranging councillors to visit and listen the issues Tamils face locally, bringing speakers and experts to provide knowledge and experience in various subjects such as immigration, investment child care, Taxation, etc. If the community centre is just for collecting money and talk about politics, I think it will not be successful. It should be law biding and provide great support to local Tamil community and in the meantime create awareness of the need of supporting some of the courses such as protesting against Tamils forcefully send back to Sri Lanka, etc.

We need our elders to give a guide and share their experience to develop our youngsters, and make our youngster very successful and confident people. We have great solicitors, doctors, engineers, accountants, technicians, architects, businessmen, teachers, builders, policemen, ect but not utilising this existing potential. We should thing how we can utilise this potential for creating maximum benefits.

The bottom-line is we must create a strong network within out community which scattered around UK. I thought that Tamil community centre that locally based and linked to other Tamil communities is best way forward.