Krishnamoorthy Jeyaluxmy Amma Foundation அறனை மறவேல்
A weathered signpost marking Point Pedro on Sri Lanka's northern coast, with the Indian Ocean beyond.

Founded 2026 · Point Pedro & Valvettithurai, Jaffna

Never forsake virtue

அறனை மறவேல்

The Krishnamoorthy Jeyaluxmy Amma Foundation advances learning, livelihoods and Tamil cultural life in the homeland of Jaffna, in honour of Krishnamoorthy and Jeyaluxmy Amma.

See our work Get involved
  • May 2026 Blood donation camp, Valvettithurai
  • Nov 2025 Relief packs for Badulla District
  • Next A special-needs centre in Puthukudiyiruppu

Point Pedro, Sri Lanka. Photo: Walkalia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Our story

A foundation named for two people

Krishnamoorthy and Jeyaluxmy Amma lived in Point Pedro and Valvettithurai, at the northern tip of the Jaffna peninsula. The Krishnamoorthy Jeyaluxmy Amma Foundation was established in 2026 by their family to carry their names into work that outlasts any one generation: education, livelihoods, independent research and cultural life in the place they called home.

The Foundation's motto is a line from Auvaiyar's Aathichudi, the verse primer generations of Tamil children have learned by heart: அறனை மறவேல், never forsake virtue. Each of the Foundation's four pillars is built around a different verse from the same text, so the charter of the work and the language of the home it serves are the same thing.

The family's own ties to Point Pedro run through its lighthouse and the shoreline around it, a fixed point the diaspora still measures distance from, wherever they have settled since.

Point Pedro lighthouse, a tall white tower, viewed from below against a pale sky.

Photo: Rattwrite, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In action · 2025–2026

Concrete work, already under way

The institutions in our roadmap will take years to build. The need is now. So before the Foundation was formally registered, the family behind it was already at work — running relief and health drives alongside local partners, and planning the next ones. This is what that has looked like.

Volunteers in red shirts registering a family, including two young children, at a blood donation camp.
Donors resting on camp beds giving blood, attended by a nurse in a decorated community hall. Bags of donated blood collected in a crate, ready for transport to hospital blood banks.

Completed May 2026 · Valvettithurai, Jaffna

A community blood donation camp

We helped run a mobile blood donation camp in Valvettithurai, drawing donors from across the town. The blood collected went on to hospital blood banks serving patients throughout the Jaffna peninsula — the kind of practical, life-saving help that does not need to wait for buildings or budgets.

  • Held as the association's 86th blood donation camp, a long-running local effort we were glad to back.
  • Donations screened, collected and delivered to hospital blood banks across Jaffna.
  • Run as a family-and-friends effort, with volunteers on registration, care and logistics.

Co-organised with the Valvettithurai Blood Donors' Association and local volunteers.

A crowd of hill-country residents gathered at the back of a relief truck to receive supplies.
A volunteer handing a 5kg bag of rice directly to a resident beside the relief truck. Volunteers packing dry rations and supplies into bags late at night before distribution.

Completed November 2025 · Badulla District, Sri Lanka

Flood-relief care packages

When floods struck the central hill country, we packed and delivered care packages to affected families in the Badulla District — tea-estate communities among the hardest hit and the least reached by aid. Supplies were sorted and bagged through the night, then handed out family by family.

  • 600 packs of noodles — 500 curry and 100 plain — plus rice and dry rations.
  • 100 feminine-hygiene kits, a need too often left out of relief drives.
  • Delivered directly to families in the affected estates, not left at a drop point.

Delivered with local relief volunteers and estate community leaders in Badulla.

What's next

The actions we're planning now

These are the concrete drives we're preparing next. The first is already in motion; the rest are proposals we're scoping with partners. If you can help make any of them real, we'd like to hear from you.

01

A special-needs children's centre

Care packages for the Olirum Vaalvu centre in Puthukudiyiruppu — diapers and hygiene supplies, learning materials, and fine-motor and developmental toys the children use every day.

In motion
02

Educational camps

Holiday learning camps for schoolchildren in Point Pedro and Valvettithurai — English, maths, science and art, taught by visiting and local volunteers.

Proposed
03

School-supplies drive

Books, stationery and uniforms for children starting the new school year, distributed through schools already serving the two towns.

Proposed
04

Livelihood micro-grants

Small grants and tools for palmyra crafts, fishing and home trades — a first, practical step towards the socioeconomic pillar.

Proposed

Have a drive we should take on, or want to run one with us? Reach us through Get involved.

Where we work

Jaffna since the war

Sri Lanka's civil war lasted from 1983 to 2009 and struck the Jaffna peninsula directly. Point Pedro and Valvettithurai, at the peninsula's northern edge, are still rebuilding: not from a single event, but from nearly three decades of displacement, and from the slower work of restoring what displacement interrupted.

Four difficulties recur in accounts of the region's recovery. Each of the Foundation's pillars answers to one of them.

  • 01 Education and opportunity

    Response: the educational institution

    Families who could afford it sent children abroad for university; many who stayed had fewer options close to home. Jaffna's own Public Library, rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in 1981, stands as a reminder of how much can be lost and how deliberately it has to be rebuilt.

  • 02 Livelihoods and local economy

    Response: socioeconomic development

    Fishing, palmyra crafts, small trade and agriculture are the trades already present in Point Pedro and Valvettithurai. Youth unemployment and a slow return of investment are widely reported constraints on the North's recovery.

  • 03 Evidence and independent inquiry

    Response: the independent research body

    Questions about the region's socioeconomic and political recovery deserve answers that hold up regardless of who is asking. That requires a research body governed apart from the family and institutions that fund it.

  • 04 Cultural and community life

    Response: the event hall and cultural centre

    Displacement and diaspora migration scattered the community that once filled Jaffna's halls and temple grounds. Heritage needs occasions to be practised in public, not only preserved in an archive.

Fishermen and buyers on a jetty at Jaffna's fish harbour, with the day's catch laid out on the ground and boats moored behind them.
Fishing boats anchored close to shore at Valvettithurai beach under a clear sky.
Woven palmyra-leaf baskets and mats for sale at a shop in a Jaffna market.

The four pillars

One charter, four verses

Each pillar takes its structural label from a line of Auvaiyar's Aathichudi, and answers one of the needs described above. Together they are the whole of the Foundation's work: no separate scholarship fund, no family-home museum, just four institutions built in sequence.

Jaffna Public Library, a white colonial-era building with domed towers, seen from its garden entrance.
01 · Education

பேதைமை அகற்று

Dispel ignorance

Educational institution

A higher-learning centre and archival library, planned for Phase 3.

Read more →
A shopkeeper among woven palmyra baskets and mats in a Jaffna market stall.
02 · Livelihoods

கௌவை அகற்று

Put away discord

Socioeconomic development

Livelihood and enterprise programmes, starting with a Phase 1 pilot.

Read more →
The gated entrance and heritage building of the University of Jaffna, framed by trees.
03 · Research

கேள்வி முயல்

Strive after knowledge

Independent research body

An arm's-length institute on socioeconomic and political questions, planned for Phase 2.

Read more →
The ornate orange gopuram tower of Nallur Kandaswamy temple against a cloudy sky.
04 · Culture

தொன்மை மறவேல்

Never forget your heritage

Event hall & cultural centre

A home for Tamil and Dravidian art and literature, planned for Phase 2.

Read more →

Governance

Who runs this, and how

The Foundation is governed by a founding board drawn from the family. As the research body and cultural centre come online, each will have its own charter. The research body in particular is designed to sit at arm's length from the family board, so its findings are not shaped by who funds it.

Founding trustees

The founding board is a family board. Trustee names will be published here once the Foundation is registered in Phase 0.

ChairTO CONFIRM

Sets the agenda and chairs the board. Family trustee.

SecretaryTO CONFIRM

Keeps records and manages correspondence. Family trustee.

TreasurerTO CONFIRM

Oversees funds and reporting. Family trustee.

TrusteeTO CONFIRM

General oversight and programme review. Family trustee.

A phased roadmap

This is a plan, not a promise. Dates will move as funding, land and permissions allow. Each phase has to earn the next.

  1. Phase 0 · 2026 Found and formalise.

    Register the Foundation, confirm trustees and charter, and establish the Point Pedro and Valvettithurai base.

  2. Phase 1 · 2026–2028 Archive and first socioeconomic pilot.

    Build the resource and archival centre, and run a first livelihoods programme with a local partner.

  3. Phase 2 · 2028–2031 Cultural centre and research body.

    Open the event hall and establish the independent research body under its own governance.

  4. Phase 3 · 2031 onward Higher-learning centre.

    Open the educational institution once earlier phases have a track record to build on.

Get involved

Four ways to help, none of them urgent

The Foundation is early. There is no donation processor yet and no pressure to act today. If any of this fits what you have to offer, write to us at contact@kjafoundation.org.

01

Partner

Organisations and institutions in Jaffna or the diaspora who want to co-design a programme with us, particularly for the Phase 1 archive or livelihoods pilot.

Organisations
02

Give

We are still setting up a formal, accountable giving process. Write to us and we will follow up directly once it is ready.

Supporters
03

Lend expertise

Archivists, librarians, teachers, economists and tradespeople willing to advise on or help build the archive and early programmes.

Specialists
04

Contribute records

Families with documents, photographs or oral histories about Point Pedro or Valvettithurai are invited to contact us about the future archive.

Families

Contact

Reach the Foundation

The Foundation is based between Point Pedro and Valvettithurai, in the Jaffna District of Sri Lanka's Northern Province, with family contacts in the diaspora.

Email
contact@kjafoundation.org TO CONFIRM
Based in
Point Pedro & Valvettithurai, Jaffna District, Northern Province, Sri Lanka