Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement

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About the Organizations

Founding year

  • 1958

What we do

Beginning in just one village (1958) and extending the movement to service a total of more than 15,000 villages over the past six decades has been a fascinating adventure. Initially it involved an education program that aimed at enabling students and teachers to live and work with the most remote village communities in Sri Lanka, lending a hand and developing self-help initiatives. Within nine years the “service learning programme” had expanded into a full-fledged development movement in hundreds of villages, with the goal of a comprehensive and nonviolent social transformation. During its first 15 years, Sarvodaya grew with hardly any foreign aid or state support, relying on volunteer labour, mostly from the beneficiaries themselves.
Our mission is multifold
Our Mission:
Create a no poverty, no affluence, and a conflict-free society.
Uplift and empower the most disadvantaged people in Sri Lanka.
Total Awakening and Well-being of All (individuals, family, village, nation, and the world) on every plane (spiritual, moral, cultural, social, economic and political).
The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement has now become stronger than ever before. A new administrative management at national level is supporting a motivated group of emerging leaders at the village and district levels. Although almost one-third of the districts supported by Sarvodaya are not financed by outside partners, they are nevertheless surviving in the knowledge that in the long term, progress for them will result from partnership and self-sustaining development activities rather than from charity. Our important role in peacemaking, community building, and securing a certain quality of life in Sri Lanka is undiminished, and our will to achieve innovation in the social, ethical, cultural, spiritual and economic fields is constantly nourished by partners who have the confidence that our years of experience including times of hardship have timeless value.

What we do

Beginning in just one village (1958) and extending the movement to service a total of more than 15,000 villages over the past six decades has been a fascinating adventure. Initially it involved an education program that aimed at enabling students and teachers to live and work with the most remote village communities in Sri Lanka, lending a hand and developing self-help initiatives. Within nine years the “service learning programme” had expanded into a full-fledged development movement in hundreds of villages, with the goal of a comprehensive and nonviolent social transformation. During its first 15 years, Sarvodaya grew with hardly any foreign aid or state support, relying on volunteer labour, mostly from the beneficiaries themselves.
Our mission is multifold
Our Mission:
Create a no poverty, no affluence, and a conflict-free society.
Uplift and empower the most disadvantaged people in Sri Lanka.
Total Awakening and Well-being of All (individuals, family, village, nation, and the world) on every plane (spiritual, moral, cultural, social, economic and political).
The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement has now become stronger than ever before. A new administrative management at national level is supporting a motivated group of emerging leaders at the village and district levels. Although almost one-third of the districts supported by Sarvodaya are not financed by outside partners, they are nevertheless surviving in the knowledge that in the long term, progress for them will result from partnership and self-sustaining development activities rather than from charity. Our important role in peacemaking, community building, and securing a certain quality of life in Sri Lanka is undiminished, and our will to achieve innovation in the social, ethical, cultural, spiritual and economic fields is constantly nourished by partners who have the confidence that our years of experience including times of hardship have timeless value.

Commemorative dates

  • January 1, 1958
  • Started living together

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Location

  • Sri Lanka

Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement

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  • Events
3 weeks ago

Healing Love Healing Money: Trust As The Foundation For A New Culture

Money, love and power are among the hardest things any community works with, and many of us carry the same fears into both: not having enough, losing what we have, and the sense that if someone else gets money or love, we won’t. Healing Love, Healing Money: Trust as the Foundation for a New Culture is taught by two intentional communities. Karen McAllister and Duncan Cryle are from Clear Sky Meditation and Retreat Center, a Buddhist-lineage community in the BC Rockies. Monika Alleweldt and Benjamin von Mendelssohn from Tamera Healing Biotope, a community of about 160 people in southern Portugal that has spent decades studying love, trust and relationship. Clear Sky has spent years working on its relationship with money, and our two communities found surprising parallels in the fears beneath both. Over four sessions we explore the roots of fear around money and belonging, love, possession and power, trust as infrastructure (community as a container for healing), and ethical livelihood. We use short meditations, body-based practices, reflection and small-group conversation. You do not need to be in a romantic relationship or live in community. When: October 27, Nov 3, 10, 17. All four sessions: 12–2pm Vancouver, 1–3pm Alberta, 7–9pm UK and Portugal, 8–10pm Central Europe. Note: US and some Canadian provinces change clocks on November 1, so the US west coast is 12–2pm on October 27, then 11am–1pm for the remaining sessions, and Eastern is 3–5pm on October 27, then 2–4pm for the rest. Cost: sliding scale Details and registration: https://www.clearskycenter.org/event/healing-love-healing-money-online/  
October 27, 2026 13:00 – November 17, 2026 15:00
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