A dedicated cyclist champion and family gets due assistance

 Felix with Lakmal Dissanayake

• Follow up to our story last week

The Harmony page last Saturday published the story about a professional cyclist who had brought fame to Sri Lanka, struggling to keep up his professional and family life in the current socio-economic context.  https://www.ft.lk/harmony_page/Racing-through-the-tide-The-story-of-Lakmal-Dissanayake/10523-741414.

The article was published as a means of publicising the story of Lakmal Dissanayake with direct contact details and address provided to enable public assistance.

A day after the publication, and with intervention from the author, Moses Akash, recently honoured with the Deshamanya title, whose story is featured in today’s edition, handed over a set of basic dry rations to Lakmal Dissanayake and his family.

By Tuesday, the Foundation for Goodness, which we had contacted to ask if they could look into the story published and offer some immediate assistance, had sent one of the organisation’s managers; Felix Dias Abeysinghe, to look into how the family could be helped immediately.

Abeysinghe, who himself is a cyclist and has a personal inclination to charity, especially for deserving sportsmen and women had visited Lakmal’s young family and spent nearly two hours with them, finding out how Lakmal’s cycle racing career could be helped, what his additional work skills are beyond the land dozer operation that we had published about (which had come to a standstill with the rise of the fuel prices and ensuing shortages).

In relation to the follow up on Lakmal Dissanayake, below are details of the intervention facilitated by Felix Dias Abeysinghe, the former CEO of a well-known company who had joined the Foundation for Goodness after retirement. The Foundation for Goodness is the charity initiated nearly two decades ago by Kushil Gunasekera, which, keeping to the Buddhist ethic, actively assists all Sri Lankans, irrespective of ethnicity or religion.

The Harmony page which followed up with Lakmal and his wife on how our publication had contributed to assist them found out that Felix had, apart from the decision of the Foundation of Goodness to provide money for immediate essentials such as food the family was lacking had looked at long term assistance for the construction of a cement house (the family is currently living in a cloth and plastic covered shelter).

He had also looked at how the education of the two young children of the cyclist, especially the 15-year-old son who was sitting for his Ordinary Level exam next year could be assisted. Thereby a decision had been arrived at to support his tuition for the next six months for several subjects such as Mathematics and English.

States Felix:

“Apart from the charity organisation I work for, I have dedicated my life to giving people hope, as I myself have seen many hopeless situations. Towards this goal, I work with several well-meaning friends under the banner Ray of Hope, to assist out of our personal funds, any genuinely deserving person or family. As I am an athlete and cyclist, I look at support that could be provided to sports persons when we meet them in need.”

“What I found in Lakmal Dissanayake was a true sportsman and a very hardworking father who was facing unbelievable hardships of not being able to buy any food at all for the family. One of the reasons for this situation as I found out was that he had been cheated of nearly two million by the last person who had given him a contract for a mass scale construction site work and did not honour the payment after the work was done.”  

“After he completes the two scheduled cycling races this month, we will be looking at how Lakmal could coach young cyclists, as is his vision. As a cyclist of very high ethics and morale, especially as he is a non-smoker and a teetotaller, his ability would be very useful to be a coach to young children and teenagers,” says Felix who is looking into how this could be conceptualised.

“Probably we could look at the creation of an academy for cyclists that could enable all persons, irrespective of levels of affluence, to take to the sport. At a time when the country is facing a fuel issue this could be practically useful,” he opines.

Spending his time travelling around Sri Lanka, looking into the case studies of families that request assistance from the Foundation of Goodness and also the requests he gets personally from all parts of Sri Lanka, Felix states that his own struggles with ‘acute poverty levels’ as a child and youth motivates him to dedicate his current retirement time frame for working in the charity sector.

Having started his career in accountancy in the garment industry and retiring as a CEO earning around four lakhs, Felix knows that ultimately the value of money is in the joy through which it is earned and spent.

“Right now, helping people in need is my full-time job. I do this for Foundation for Goodness and the charity me and my friends have started called ‘Ray of Hope.’ Many times I would undertake to assist some family without knowing from where the money would come from and somehow I would have enough to support them by the end of the day.

“I have a habit of every month placing amounts of money from my personal savings and earnings through which I could assist people. I am assisted by those who have the same passion as me in helping fellow human beings,” he states.

We conclude our conversation on the realistic note that life ends and that the purpose of life is to give it meaning and that the best way we can do this is to exalt what is kind, compassionate and gentle.