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When
Nuwan went back to US after his vacation here, he wrote to me requesting me to help
the five kids he sponsors to send e-mails so that he could start communicating with
them. I also recall him telling me that after meeting these talented kids (all of them)
his life has changed and has given him a new sense of direction. He has further
written saying that I would find inner piece and happiness if I could help these
young talented children who could change the future of our motherland tomorrow to
a better one. I now think I understand what he meant.
My first session with the children was in December to teach them basics of using
e-mail and Internet. Actually speaking I did not know where to start from, what I
could achieve and whether they will grasp what I say as these kids have seen a
computer only few days ago. Being attached to IT division of a company, I knew how
hard it is to teach even educated people if they have not been exposed to computer
environment. However, on the first day itself I was amazed at the speed of learning
and mostly of their thirst for learning. I was happy with the outcome of the first
day training where the kids grasp basics of e-mails to the extent that it was possible
for them to create and attaching simple movie clips. I realized that these kids could
excel much faster than we were. The only barrier I saw was their knowledge of English
language.
I had few such meetings with the kids thereafter at least once a month. I kept
Nuwan informed and we added second computer to the center. Nuwan, seen the progress
has decided that it was the time to have a proper computer lab in place. So with
the parts and money send by him and some of his colleagues we managed to do a
professional job in drawing a local area network and power distribution for small
network of 7 computers with internet access via LAN.
Despite all these efforts, we saw a great barrier to real progress with the involvement
of all the students of the scholarship programme. This is because we could not obtain
suitable resource personnel to do the lecturing and arrange practices sessions during
the weekdays. It was not possible to do this on my own as I was based in Colombo and
with my office work and the studies. The real change to the programme in my mind came
after we established connections with Wanni of Horizon school
who later introduced Deepal and Ranjith to us.
Today, I am happy to see that computer center operates at least 3 days a week which I
believe should be increased to all days of the weeks.. I am also happy to see the
first students that I met today acting as instructors proving leadership setting
example to others.
My role now with respect to the Attanagalla project is a different one. It is more
or less a coordinators, facilitator and administrators job. However, I look forward
to the new challenge lies ahead in the other two centers where Lak Daruwo is going
to operate computer centers (Ebilipitiya and Matale) in the near future.
I would like to conclude my massage with an appeal to all those Sri Lankans like me
who has benefited from the free education. Please come forward and help our effort
to create a better Sri Lanka tomorrow by investing in our future generation whose
talents are there to be found. I really believe that they are the ones to make the
difference. I think it is the least that we could do for the country that has invested
in us to see that someday Sri Lanka will be on the world map again as it was long
before. We cannot expect government to do this efficiently anymore due to the
constraints.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who have helped me in this project to-date.
Without their help my contribution would have not been possible.
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