And the winner is ...

SRI LANKA!

Apologies for the delay in revelation (whose tardiness is directly related to the phenomenon described in A day in the life of bureaucracy) but really, let's have a little chat about this ... are there no independent voters out there?? There seemed to be a serious case of follow-the-leader syndrome out there - next time, we're hiding the results until everyone has voted!

Anyhow, Sri Lanka it is, to do a bit of "site surveying" with a local NGO in order to submit a funding proposal for a project that I am uber excited about ... one focused especially on Sri Lankan migrant women and their families. While all the media coverage on Sri Lanka is looking northwards to the war region, elsewhere in the country hundreds of thousands of women - mothers, wives, sisters, daughters - are looking to all-to-often unscrupulous recruitment agencies who find them jobs as domestic workers for wealthy families in the Middle East.

Long story short, tremendous problems are borne of this ... the women find themselves at the mercy of the recruitment agencies who withhold their passports and pay, charge exorbitant fees, many women are raped by the men of the houses they clean ... only to have the wives discover their husbands' infidelity and take their rage out on the migrants, regularly burning them with irons.

Meanwhile, back home, any money that manages to make it back is more often than not not saved or spent on childrens' education as intended, but rather spent on alcohol, gambling, petty consumer goods, etc. Unemployed dads / husbands struggle with the so-called role reversal and domestic abuse and rape of young girls by their fathers and brothers is not uncommon.

Women become pregnant from having been raped abroad and are subsequently sent back to Sri Lanka, that, of course, doesn't go over well with the spouses, let alone many others in the community, and the mixed raced babies born as a result are rejected by society. Many women are shocked to find all the money they'd sent home over the last XXX years disappeared into thin air by the time they get home ... returned migrant women have the highest suicide rate of any demographic in Sri Lanka.

So what to do? We're hoping to develop public awareness programs on the potential risks involved in migrating under irregular circumstances, put together pre-departure training and orientation programs for those who choose to work abroad and their families, so that they may be prepared, offer reintegration support programs and financial management skills training for returning migrants, special programs for youth, counselling and psycho-social support, and a 24-hour information centre and hotline so that families might stay better in touch while their loved ones are working abroad.

Now we just have to hope that the funding agencies are as convinced about the idea as we are!