The Green Memorial Hospital (GMH), is the most valuable medical-related charity project in Sri Lanka. GMH is a medical heritage of Ceylon, based on the fact that this facility was established in 1848 by the American Doctor Samuel Fiske Green as the first Teaching Hospital for Western medicine in British Ceylon, and the second oldest in South Asia.
The next important characteristic of this cause is that it serves the people of the country with treatments they cannot afford for their wellbeing.
Furthermore, this entity went on to train medical care and technical staff selected among the orphans of the war that ravaged the Northern and Eastern parts of Sri Lanka. These training schools continue even today with young people being given careers in the medical field and providing uplifting in life for the poor.
GMH has also gone on to engage in other charitable work in other parts of the country and the intention is to help uplift the country as a whole. As such, GMH can be said to be the only charitable project of its kind, in addition to being a proud heritage of Ceylon located in the Jaffna suburb of Manipay in the northern Peninsular of Sri Lanka.
As a result of the war in Sri Lanka that ravaged for 3 decades, there is also a diaspora of Sri Lankans who are settled down in various parts of the world and giving great support to this project. Through them, we have seen complete strangers to Sri Lanka also coming forward to be a part of this beautiful and touching story of humanity. Work to renovate and re-establish this vintage Hospital commenced in 2002 with the setting up of the UK Charity, Friends of Manipay Hospital (FOMH).
Among the wide and varied initiatives to raise funds for the GMH cause, one significant and very successful drive was the annual cycling tour first held in 2017 as a fundraiser. The idea was to cycle from the capital city Colombo to the Manipay Hospital just over 400km in 4 days which is quite a challenge given the sunny weather conditions. This has grown since into a spectacular event where we see many forms of participation from cyclists to non-cycling participants to donors and sponsors, who collectively pull in a lot of funding for the cause. Besides the funding, this annual tour delivers an amazing experience of Sri Lanka which is also fast developing as a tourist destination of many diversities.
This annual ride is now bursting at the seams and now at crossroads to expand in several parallel events with professional organizing. The motto of the ride is to “leave no one behind,” which gives courage to anyone from ladies to senior folk to come on board to collect funds from their friends and families. There are even training and fellowship groups in several overseas hubs so that people can take on cycling and prepare so that they could be a part of this cycling tour and also see a great country.
In the past 8 years, the ride has been raising a lot of funds through proud participants and will be clocking TEN YEARS soon. The GMH Cause for GMH has been going on since 2002 and is looking at celebrating its 25th year in 2026, next year.
It’s been a great journey for all those involved from then to now as the joy is when donors and contributors visit the hospital.
Sri Lanka is a land of history from time immemorial and its people believe in its traditions of helping humanity. This is a country where people from many faiths and religions exist with one another as done for centuries and compassion prevails in every household.
It’s amazing how the world has many such good people who like to be a part of the GMH cause. You too could be one. Feel free to share with like-minded people as the hard work hitherto done is to be seen on the ground in Manipay and all are welcome to visit when here next time.
Sriomal De Silva
Director
Ride4Ceylon Guarantee Limited
Sri Lanka