Children first, always
Every rupee is tied to a named child, a school and a term. Not to an office, not to a campaign, not to us.
A charity for Sri Lanka's children
Somewhere tonight a child is folding away a uniform she has outgrown, because the next one costs more than her mother earns in a week. She will not tell her teacher why she stopped coming. Alunith exists so that silence ends.
"The moon never asks the earth for anything in return for its light. It simply shines so others can find their way."
0 LKR
to start helping
100%
goes to the child
Day 1
we just began
Why we exist
Nobody drops out of school in one day.
It happens slowly. A torn shoe. A missing textbook. A bus fare that becomes rice instead. A teacher who asks once, then stops asking. By the time anyone notices, a girl of thirteen is packing tea leaves and a boy of fifteen is carrying cement — and the country loses a doctor it will never know it had.
We are not a large organisation. We started this month, with no funding, from a room in Sri Lanka. What we do have is a promise: everything given is named, tracked and published, and nothing is taken by us along the way.
We are new, and we say so
We started with nothing but a moon on a black screen. No inflated numbers, no borrowed photos, no invented history.
Light, not noise
No guilt selling, no countdown pressure. A quiet, steady hand — and receipts published for anything given.
Origin
Named for the moon, not the sun.
The sun burns on its own terms. It owes nothing to anything in the sky — it shines whether or not anyone is there to catch the light.
The moon is different. It has no light of its own — only what it reflects, and only when it is aligned with something bigger than itself. Alunith takes its name from luna, the moon, and zenith, its highest point. We do not shine independently. We exist to catch a child's light and throw it higher.
One child, in her own words
“I stayed home three months because I had no shoes. My mother cried in the kitchen where she thought I could not hear her. I only want to be the first girl in my family to sit the A/Ls.”
Thanuja, 14 · Grade 9 · Nuwara Eliya
Who we stand beside
- Children aged 5–16 at risk of leaving school over cost
- Students sitting O/L and A/L without fees or past papers
- Estate and rural families where one wage feeds six
- Village schools with no library, no tutor, one blackboard
What we will never do
- Post a child's face or name without the family's consent
- Invent numbers, donors or history to look established
- Take a salary or a cut from a child's fund
- Pressure anyone to give money they cannot spare
Open causes
Three small things standing between a child and a classroom.
These are our first three. Nothing has been raised yet — we are starting from zero, openly, and every rupee that arrives will be shown here.
Uniforms & shoes
Nuwara Eliya · tea estates
A pair of black school shoes costs more than a mother earns in four days cutting leaves. Children stay home rather than stand barefoot in line.
LKR 0 raisedof LKR 180,000
Books & a reading corner
Monaragala · single-room schools
Sixty children, one blackboard, no library. A shelf of books and a tutor two evenings a week changes a whole village's grade sheet.
LKR 0 raisedof LKR 260,000
O/L exam fees
Anuradhapura · Mannar
No student should miss their Ordinary Level for the price of a form and a bus fare. Fees, past papers, four months of revision.
LKR 0 raisedof LKR 340,000
Even 0 LKR
You don't need money to build a better vision.
Most people who write to us have nothing to give. They give anyway — an hour, a share, a shelf of old books. That is how this begins, and honestly, that is how it has begun.
Share one post
One share reaches a person we could never reach. Most of our first helpers came from someone reposting a child's story at midnight.
Give an hour
Tutor maths online. Translate a letter. Drive a box of books to a village. An hour is worth more than money we don't have yet.
Send what you outgrew
Old textbooks, a school bag your child has outgrown, a working calculator. Nothing new is needed for something to begin.
Trust, before we ask for anything
- Every rupee is published. A running ledger of what came in, what it bought, and which school received it.
- Receipts, not photos. We show the bill from the uniform shop before we show a child's face.
- Zero overhead, for now. The people behind Alunith pay their own way. Nothing given is spent on us.
- Ask us anything. Write to the inbox below and a human replies — usually within a day.
Help a child
Start with whatever is in your hand.
Tell us what you can offer — money, time, books, or just your voice — and we will reply with exactly which child or school it reaches, and what it costs down to the rupee.
LKR 500
a week of books
LKR 2,500
shoes + socks
LKR 7,500
a full term
0 LKR is a welcome amount
For schools, families, volunteers or anyone who simply wants to ask how it works — the inbox is open. Straight to the people behind Alunith, with no layer in between.