Hi, my name is Ash - a 4th year dental student at the University of Manchester. This august, I will be travelling to Sri Lanka with the British Tamil Dental Association (@BTDA_uk) to deliver dental care and dental education to communities in north of the country.

We will be based in Jaffna and Killinochi - two regions particularly close to home for all of us. The northern province of Sri Lanka was heavily affected by the war and given Sri Lanka's current economic crisis, access to dental care is particularly difficult - this is where we hope to make a difference.

We are firm believers in education and prevention so a lot of our work will focus on this. We plan to speak in schools/orphanages, hand out dental educational materials that we have made ourselves and carry out oral cancer screening where possible. We also plan to donate dental essentials (toothbrushes and toothpaste) to people in rural areas as well as dental materials for the few dentists there as dental materials are hard to come by in these areas.

This project is extremely close to my heart as my parents were forced to flee the country in 1986. Myself and the students accompanying me are keen to give back to our people. As a student however, a project like this one can be extremely costly which is why I've started this GoFundMe. The money you contribute will go towards supplies and transport and will directly help the people of Jaffna and Killinochi. If this project is successful we have plans in the future to expand to other parts of northern Sri Lanka so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for reading,

Ash