Founding of Nūl

Nūl began long before it had a name. It began beneath a moonlit neem tree in a village in Sri Lanka, in the stories of desh Balasubramaniam’s Ammama (maternal grandmother), stories that carried the weight of a people and the warmth of a home that would later be lost to war. It grew through the years of rupture, a father kidnapped, a home robbed at gunpoint, a workshop burned to the ground, a family fleeing not out of choice but out of survival, crossing borders and continents and arriving in New Zealand on humanitarian asylum with $1984 dollars and a body full of memories.

For years desh worked across the world, almost deliberately avoiding Sri Lanka, working where the wounds were not his own. Until a boy no older than twelve in a refugee camp in the north looked at him and asked simply, will you come back? That question was a mirror. It asked who he was, where he stood and what responsibility he carried. He left with the boy's voice lodged inside him and never fully let it go.

What followed was a quiet but determined turning toward home. desh began working in Sri Lanka, initially through Ondru, shaping a project that sought to respond to the realities he encountered, the fractured communities, the unhealed wounds, the extraordinary resilience and the deep need for something more lasting than a visit. As the vision grew it became clear that what was emerging deserved its own foundation, its own identity, its own thread.

Mohan Bhagwandas, a trusted advisor with deep experience across global development, came on board to help shape the early thinking, along with family and friends. Kaori Paola Ochoa Aoki joined as the first volunteer student intern, bringing energy, care and commitment to the earliest days of the work. Together, around a dining table in Belgrave, Melbourne, in late 2024, Nūl was brought into being something more than an idea.

Grounded further in his postgraduate research, Nūl emerged from the understanding that reconstruction is not only physical but emotional, social and spiritual, and from a commitment to weave together Tamil, Sinhala, Malayaga Tamil, Muslim, Vedda, Burgher and other communities so they may rebuild, heal and thrive together. Our work is organised around three pillars:

(1) Education, building knowledge, leadership and critical thinking within communities;

(2) Economic, creating sustainable livelihoods and local economies that grow from within; and

(3) Equity, strengthening social connection, healing and inclusion across ethnic, religious, gender and generational divides.

It is both a return and a beginning. A commitment to listen, to stay and to walk with communities as they lead their own futures.