Ceylinco Nena Sarana empowers Sri Lankan students with e-learning facilties

Sunil C. Perera in Colombo
Blazing a trail in the Sri Lankan education sector, Ceylinco Consolidated has launched an ambitious project to empower student in Sri Lanka to build their lives through e-Learning material. Under this new project - Ceylinco Nena Sarana - (www.ceylinconenasarana.org), 500 of the country’s most deserving schools will be gifted with 500 brand new, state-of-the-art computers and e-Learning material. Ceylinco Nena Sarana will thus touch the lives of 300,000 students, making it the largest education oriented CSR project undertaken by the private sector in Sri Lanka.
Architect of this laudable project and Chairman of Ceylinco Consolidated Deshamanya Dr. Lalith Kotelawala said, “I believe that access to knowledge, which will be facilitated by this project, will have a tremendous impact on the students, and that this in turn, will benefit the development of our country in this era when the use of IT is a vital component in nation building and economic progress”.
Ceylinco Nena Sarana has as its primary aim, to assist the development of rural education by providing supplementary educational material to students in remote areas access, which in turn, will open a new window of opportunity to build, and thus change their lives. If not for Ceylinco Nena Sarana, these schools stand little or no chance of obtaining a computer or e-Learning material to educate and train their students.
Launched with sponsorship of The Seylan Bank PLC, Ceylinco Life and The Finance Company PLC, Ceylinco Nena Sarana will also provide the 500 schools with a monthly study pack for a period of 36 months. Teachers and senior students of these schools will also receive instructions on the handling and proper usage of the computers and its installed programmes so that they can, in turn, operate the programme on their own by instructing students in lower grades.
The benefits of the Ceylinco Nena Sarana are wide ranging and far reaching. They cover English in Grades 1-10, Mathematics in Grades 1-10 in Sinhala and Tamil where selected lessons of the existing school curriculum will be developed using multi-media technology for easy learning. Computing for Grades 6-10 in Sinhala and Tamil encompasses selected lessons from popular computer applications which will be developed using multimedia technology for easy learning.
There will also be additional lessons in English for AL students, supplementary computing studies for OL students, an e-Library with its comprehensive encyclopaedia and Talking English Dictionary, together with past question papers and model answers for the Year 5 Scholarship exam, and, past OL papers in Sinhala and Tamil.
Lanka Ecom Technologies Ltd is the project manager for this project and is responsible for keeping the aspirations of all stakeholders satisfied. One major task is to ensure the timely preparation and the delivery of content to schools, which will be carried out on a monthly basis. The final evaluation of their efforts will be manifest by the performance of students at public exams in the coming years.
A project close to the heart of its architect, Ceylinco Nena Sarana will henceforth dramatically change the face of education in Sri Lanka by empowering thousands of school children and affording them hitherto unavailable opportunities. Says Dr. Kotelawala, “It is my cherished dream, to see that every little child in the furthest corner of our island home has the opportunity to build his / her life to an optimum. I will do my utmost to make this dream a reality. The children the future of Sri Lanka deserve this chance. I am deeply committed to this cause”.