Philanthropy
Muralitharan, along with his manager Kushil Gunasekara, established the Foundation of Goodness, a charity organization, in the early 2000s. This organization is committed to the wellbeing of the Seenigama region (in southern Sri Lanka) and supports local communities through a range of projects across areas including children's needs, education and training, health care and psycho-social support, housing, livelihoods, sport and the environment. Murali’s Seenigama project raised funds from cricketers and administrators in England and Australia. Canadian pop-star Bryan Adams donated a swimming pool.
Muralitharan also plans to build a second sports complex for war-displaced civilians in Mankulam, a town located 300 kilometers from north of Colombo. The two-year one million dollar project aims to build a sports center, a school, English and IT training centers and an Elders' home. While the Sports Complex remains the main project, Foundation of Goodness also plans to help educate children, youth and adults. English cricketer Sir Ian Botham visited Mankulam with Muralitharan, and later addressing the media in Colombo on 27 March 2011 said that he will consider a walk from Point Pedro (the extreme northern tip of Sri Lanka) to Dondra Head (the extreme southern tip of Sri Lanka) to raise funds for the project.
In June 2004, Muralitharan also joined the United Nations World Food Program as an ambassador to fight hunger among school children.
When the tsunami devastated Sri Lanka on 26 December 2004, Muralitharan galvanised into action to ensure that aid reached people that needed it. He himself narrowly escaped death, arriving 20 minutes late at Seenigama, where he was to give away prizes at one of the charity projects he worked on. While international agencies were bringing food in by air, there was an urgent need for transport, and Murali organised three convoys of 10 trucks each, paying for these himself, to get the food to people who needed it. He persuaded those who could to donate clothes, and supervised the delivery himself.
During the hard work of rehabilitation in the tsunami's aftermath, cement was in short supply. Muralitharan promptly signed an endorsement deal with Lafarge, a global cement giant, that was a straight barter, where cement would be supplied to the Foundation for Goodness in exchange for work Muralitharan did. During the first three years since the tsunami, the foundation raised more than US$ 4 million to help survivors, and has built homes, schools, sports facilities and computer centres.
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)