Oppuravillam means more than house of reconciliation, which is its literal translation. For the Revd Donald Jeyabalan Kanagaratnam, who lived and served there from 3 June 1981 to 15 May 1991, it meant a life lived in harmony with God and for other people. He believed that ordinary human kindness could turn strangers into one family, and that Christian presence could be a living sign of grace in the middle of conflict.
He built it as a place of healing: mental, moral and spiritual, and beyond that a place where the deeper wounds of a country might be worked on. People came to learn to read, to reckon with their own history and culture, and to meet each other as persons rather than as problems to be solved. It was a home for study, reflection, dialogue and writing.
In 2017 Oppuravillam was re-consecrated in the Northern Archdeaconry as a centre for the Church of Ceylon’s mission of peace and reconciliation. Its work now is awareness, training, and the practical business of helping people of different communities live alongside one another.
The pre-school
Established in 2018 and now in its ninth year, with thirty three children: eight in the three year old group, ten in the four year old group and fifteen in the five year old group. It brings together Tamil speaking and Sinhala speaking children in the same room. Teaching happens in Tamil, Sinhala and English, individually and in groups. Morning assembly includes prayers from different faiths. The major festivals of every faith are kept. Parents are brought in deliberately, so that the two communities meet through their children.
The children learn each other's language, religion and culture at an age before anyone has explained to them why they should not.
Nutritional support for the children is funded through the J-RAP Desk, and the teachers have taken part in early childhood training run for the Northern Province. The pre-school does not yet have a building of its own, and one is first on the centre's list of needs.
The sewing training centre
Six months of training, 360 hours, twenty women a batch, recruited from villages across the Vavuniya District. The course runs from the basics to advanced garment making, alongside sessions on social issues, civic responsibility and values. Through the National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority, participants can earn a National Vocational Qualification. Five batches have completed the course and the sixth is in training now. Graduates sew for their own families and take in tailoring work for others.
Clean water
Many wells in the Vavuniya District were found after the war to be unfit to drink from, and kidney disease is rising in the district. Oppuravillam purifies up to 2,000 litres of drinking water a day and gives it out to the neighbouring villages and to travellers on the A9, up to twenty litres a person each visit. The supply stopped for several months when algae got into the source. A tube well was sunk, the water is better for it, and the water point reopened at the beginning of 2026. It now runs every day.
Evening classes
Free evening tuition in four schools, in mathematics, science and history, for students preparing for the G.C.E. Ordinary Level who cannot pay for private classes. Mathematics for Grades 6, 7 and 8 at Kallikulam village. Pass rates in the subjects taught rose on the previous year.
Working with the villages
With support from the Anglican Board of Mission in Australia, Oppuravillam works with government offices, NGOs, schools, pre-schools and village leaders on what each village says it needs, with particular effort in one village identified as the most disadvantaged. Staff make home visits and run counselling, leadership and awareness programmes. They have set up children's clubs, youth clubs, women's self-help groups and evening learning centres. More than 450 people have taken part in its workshops.
Topics have included child protection and positive parenting, early marriage, violence and child abuse, an introduction to gender, climate change and health, and artificial intelligence. Ripples is a one day leadership programme for young people.
Water is Life
A programme on the value of water, funded by the United Thank Offering: why clean water matters, how to use less of it, what pollutes it, and how to harvest rain. Seventeen sessions have been held in schools and villages, reaching 455 people in the previous year and 288 in this one.
The campus
The grounds are farmed organically, without chemical pesticides: coconut, mango, guava, jackfruit, lime, cashew and timber. The coconut and mango trees are now old enough to bring in a modest income. A new residential building sleeps more than twenty people and is available for retreats, workshops and seminars, which also helps pay for the work.
Neighbours
Each month Oppuravillam offers a meal to the monk of the nearby Buddhist temple and takes part in the monthly observance there. Staff join the Buddhist, Hindu and Christian festivals of the villages around them. The relationship with the temple, and with the Buddhist and Hindu communities nearby, is stronger for it.
Counselling
A befriender-counsellor works from Oppuravillam with individuals, families and groups, in one to one sessions and in small groups, and has begun using sport as a way into psycho-education with young people.
What Oppuravillam needs
A building for the pre-school. Qualified people to manage and maintain the campus, who have been hard to find. And a settlement of its land boundaries, which have been unclear since the war and need legal demarcation.
Its plans include livestock and more vocational courses, programmes and a library for older people in the villages, and a study centre on justice, peace and reconciliation for visitors from other districts and from abroad.
Manager: Mr C. Sureshkumar. Oppuravillam, Kokkuveli Junction, Vavuniya.