Gratiaen Trust - Panel of Judges 2010

Feizal Samath - Chairperson

Feizal Samath is an experienced journalist with a career spanning over 30 years. He has worked for major Sri Lankan newspapers and international news agencies Reuters (Colombo and India) and Bloomberg (Colombo), covering sports, culture, entertainment, law, politics, business, and development and social issues. He is currently Business Editor of a leading Colombo Sunday newspaper.

Feizal is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency in Colombo reporting essentially on development news and features, and is a contributor to some Middle East newspapers.

He is a social activist working on helping children in need, and supports causes relating to poverty and women's' empowerment. His special interest is music and he has helped raise money for children's charities through UNICEF and Save the Children by organizing annual country and folk music concerts titled Country Roads since 1988 through his non-profit organization, the Country Music Foundation (CMF).

Sunethra Bandaranaike

Since she graduated from Oxford University with an Honours Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), Sunethra Bandaranaike has worked in Sri Lanka and abroad in various fields, from being a researcher in the Minority Rights Group and the Overseas Development Institute in the UK, to holding the post of Co-ordinating Secretary to the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1973 to 1977.

She serves as the Chairperson of the Sunethra Bandaranaike Trust, which was set up in 1995, to provide financial assistance to those involved in the performing arts.

In 1998 Sunethra started working with differently-abled young people. With the establishment of the Sunera Foundation in 2000, she has focused on using the performing arts to enhance the lives of the differently-abled, as well as raising awareness of the need to integrate them into society.

Dinithi Karunanayake

Dinithi Karunanayake is a Lecturer in English at the Department of English, University of Colombo. She graduated from the University of Peradeniya with an Honours degree in English and has a Masters degree in Comparative Literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies and University College London, University of London. Dinithi's main research interests lie in South Asian women's writing, post-colonial literature and theory, Sri Lankan English studies and translation, and cultural studies. Her work has appeared in Beyond Borders: The SAARC Journal, The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities and The University of Colombo Review. The book Continuities and Departures: Essays on Sri Lankan Women's Writing in English, which is co-edited by her, is currently in press.