Continuing tsunami relief efforts have brought some UCLA faculty
members in direct contact with the entertainment industry.
The desire to provide direct relief to the victims of the
tsunami in Sri Lanka has driven married faculty members Lokubanda
and Niranjala Tillakaratne to come together with Camille Cellucci
from Hollywood Artist Alliance to rebuild a village in one of Sri
Lanka’s hardest hit regions: the Galle District.
The main objective of the project is to raise money to build
homes for the victims of the disaster.
Immediately after the tsunami, the Tillakaratne’s, who are
both Sri Lankan, began fund-raising with support from their temple
““ the Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara.
With the help of Reverend Piyananda of the temple, the project
was able to procure a plot of land in southern Sri Lanka and gained
permission from the country’s government to begin rebuilding
the village that was once there.
“We received a piece of land a couple hundred yards from
the ocean ““ near the train that had washed up when the
tsunami hit. We have hired contractors in Sri Lanka but we are also
sending volunteers from the U.S. to help build the homes,”
said Lokubanda Tillakaratne also known as Tillak, a counselor in
the Office of International Students and Scholars at UCLA.
Camille Cellucci, a UC Berkeley graduate and a visual effects
producer best known for her work on James Cameron’s
“Titanic” is one of these volunteers.
“When I heard about the tsunami, I was very sad and
overwhelmed. I went to Reverend Piyananda’s temple in Los
Angeles and I wrote a check. I went home and went to bed and
couldn’t sleep because I needed to do more,” Cellucci
said.
Cellucci thought that if she could get 1,500 people to donate
$25 a month it would result in a huge contribution toward the
relief efforts.
With that thought she founded Hollywood Artist Alliance, a
non-profit organization formed out of the desire to help the
victims of the tsunami.
“People all over the country get very excited about
Hollywood and what it means. We think of Hollywood as a state of
mind where people join together to transform the impossible into
reality,” she said.
With the help of a friend from the World Trust Foundation, the
alliance began to raise money for tsunami relief efforts.
Cellucci will be leaving for Sri Lanka on March 19 with a group
from Airline Ambassadors International, a non-profit organization
affiliated with the United Nations to help oversee the construction
process.
“My primary function will be to meet people who are going
to be doing work and get a feel of how the work is going,”
Cellucci said.
The government of Sri Lanka has set a time limit on the project.
The houses need to be done by June or July of this year. Each house
is to be 500 to 700 square feet with one family to a house.
New bills passed by Congress require that the homes must be
built to comply with U.S. codes.
“They won’t be fancy, but in terms of structure and
engineering they will be the best they can be,” Cellucci
said.
This is the first of many trips to Sri Lanka for Cellucci, she
said.
“I see myself going at least 3 times between now and when
the construction is done,” she said.
The purpose of going to Sri Lanka and getting directly involved
in the relief process is to make sure that what is done is actually
serving the people of Sri Lanka, Celluci said.
“We want to serve and not impose. We are still assessing
it a little bit at a time. There is so much to deal with over
there,” she said.
Cellucci’s involvement has been much appreciated by the
Tillakaratnes.
“It helps. Any kind of added exposure helps at this time.
It’s a mutual relationship with her efforts and our
cooperation with her. She has already done lot of work,”
Tillak said.
Tillak and his wife were involved with aid geared toward Sri
Lanka even before the tsunami hit the country in December.
“We would go every year and usually take 2-3 students with
us for a month to Sri Lanka to teach English, and do arts and
crafts with school children,” he said.
The couple collected used eyeglasses to give out to the needy in
Sri Lanka from a mobile eye clinic.
This summer, rather than taking students to the country,
Niranjala, a Research Physiologist in the Physiological Science
Department at UCLA will be taking her daughter Mihiri with her to
Sri Lanka to help with the construction.
“We haven’t seen even one percent of the
destruction,” Tillak said.
In addition to building the houses, the Tillakaratnes are also
sending school bags, books and letters written by American students
to students in Sri Lanka.
The relief efforts are “very fulfilling” Tillak
said. “There is no question about that.”