Family's tsunami challenge

The Aurora project was founded by a former Bexhillian and her husband in the wake of the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami, which killed hundreds of thousands and made many more homeless.

Jan and Ian Linch were lucky to escape with their lives.

The couple, of Sutton Valence in Kent, returned to Sri Lanka last year with the intention of founding an orphanage but came away having bought four acres of land and with a plan in place to build 40 homes and a school!

In less than a year they had raised 140,000.

Jan (nee White) was born in Bexhill and is an ex-pupil of Bexhill High. Ian attended Claverham Community College.

Now Cheryl Carey, of Glenleigh Park Road, her husband Chris, sons Joshua, 16, and Daniel, 19, plus Daniel's girlfriend Madeleine Painter, 18, plan to fly at the beginning of December to Kasgoda in the badly-hit Galle region of Sri Lanka to help complete the project.

Each two-bedroomed bungalow in the complex cost initially about 3,000 to build though the last few are costing twice that.

Jan Linch has been offering British companies the opportunity to sponsor a house and have it named after them. She has offered schools in the Maidstone area the chance to help sponsor the 3,000 Montessori schools at the centre of the Aurora project.

Cheryl says: "It is going to cost us as a family 4,000 just to get there."

Three factors have prompted the family's decision.

Cheryl says: "We were absolutely stunned when we saw the tsunami on television that Boxing Day. I think everyone was.

"While I was watching it I had the feeling that I am going to go there for some reason....

"My niece came back from her wedding out there and all the people she had met were killed, so all her lovely memories of the wedding are gone.

"That touched me as well."

When Cheryl met Jan and learned about the Aurora project the die was cast.

Chris, a former builder, says: "It's an opportunity not just to give money but to do something practical."

The family will fly out only days before the official opening of the complex of 38 houses, four shops, school and medical centre - all robustly built of brick and blocks and two miles from the sea.

The opening has been timed just before the second anniversary of the tsunami. The last houses await completion and the Careys will be hard put to get on with the task before flying on to the Maldives for a well-deserved family holiday, funded separately from the Sri Lankan element of the trip.