: From an abandoned mission house to Asia’s very first girls’ boarding school Uduvil Girls’ College is 200 years old

Date: 19 November 2024 at 11:54:28 GMT
Subject: From an abandoned mission house to Asia’s very first girls’ boarding school  Uduvil Girls’ College is 200 years old

From an abandoned mission house to Asia’s very first girls’ boarding school 

Uduvil Girls’ College is 200 years old

By Shiranee Mills Sunday Times 17 November 2024

It was on a fine April morning in 1820 that the founding missionaries of Uduvil Girls’ College stepped into the abandoned premises of a Franciscan monk in Uduvil. The mission house on the premises had no windows or doors. Undeterred, the missionaries, Rev. Miron, Harriet Winslow, Rev. Levi and Mary Spaulding, set to work to weave Palmyra leaves into windows and doors.

To Harriet Winslow and Mary Spaulding, the education of women of the Jaffna peninsula became a passion. The community of the time did not encourage the education of girl children and considered it a shame to have their girls go out of their homes unchaperoned.

Student Council of the 1940s

Ms. Winslow and Ms. Spaulding went through the village lanes and by-lanes calling upon women and children to come to the mission home to learn their letters. At first they were met with laughter and ridicule but gradually the prejudice began to wane. The first two girls who became students of the school were from the neighbourhood and would often come into the mission compound to collect firewood and would peek through the mission house windows to have a glimpse of the two white women.

Harriet Winslow: Founder principal

Ms. Winslow gradually befriended these two little girls and they would sit on the veranda of the mission house to learn arithmetic, geography and some sewing from her. They would not go into the mission house as custom forbade them from eating or drinking outside their home. Yet fate had its own designs and one day a heavy storm prevented the two girls from going back to their homes and they stayed the night with their teacher.

Early next morning Harriet Winslow took them back home but the two girls were not received well for they had stayed away from home and one of them had eaten a meal at the mission house.

The father of one of the girls brought the little one back to the missionary and told her to look after his child, educate her and give her in marriage.  Harriet Winslow received the little girl, who became one of the very first students of the school. Uduvil Girls’ College was formally established in January 1824.

It has the distinction of being the very first girls’ boarding school to be established on Asiansoil.

Ten principals have been at its helm and Uduvil has continued to grow through these 200 years. The many challenges that it faced at various periods of its history did not deter its growth spearheaded by the commitment of its principals, teachers, office staff, matrons and helpers of the school and their collective faithfulness to the founding principles of the school.

A service of song and celebration
Today, Sunday, November 17, at 5 p.m., alumni, friends, students, teachers and well wishers of Uduvil Girls’ College, will gather at the Cathedral of Christ the Living Saviour in Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo, to celebrate the school’s 200th anniversary.