Tea Leaf Trust (TLT) was set up in 2008 to support disadvantaged 18-24 year olds from Sri Lanka’s tea estates. The Trust runs Tea Leaf Vision (TLV) Education Centres which provide practical and relevant education, focusing on English language, business, IT, community service, personal development and emotional health. They believe that young people should have equal opportunities to develop and succeed, regardless of where they are born, their ethnicity or who their family is and strive to use education as a tool for social change. The tea estate populations live in impoverished, overcrowded and unsafe conditions. Malnutrition, risk of violence and high mortality rates affect the families who live there and basic education for the children is behind the national average. The first TLV centre was piloted in Maskeliya in 2010, followed by the centre in Nuwara Eliya in 2017. Staff at the centres are also from the tea estates and provide strong, positive role models for the youths they teach.

TLT have set up social enterprises to employ women from the estates, offering them alternative and more sustainable income:

• AMMA: produces natural dyed textiles for sale

• Cloud Forest Mushroom: a new project growing and selling mushrooms

• Tea Leaf Travels: a travel business

For more information, please visit their website.