School children in many rural areas of Sri Lanka will have an opportunity to enhance their IT skills thanks to a new community initiative of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon and the Mother Sri Lanka Programme of the Presidential Secretariat.
Under this programme, Commercial Bank has announced plans to donate computers and related equipment to set up computer laboratories in several underprivileged schools.
The first set of beneficiary schools have been selected from the North Central, Uva and North Western provinces and a completed computer laboratory is to be handed over to the students of the first beneficiary of the project, the Kosgolla Maha Vidyalaya in Badulla district, the bank said. Kosgolla Maha Vidyalaya is a school in Uva Province that won third place from Mother Sri Lanka School Dialogue Competition in Sinhala medium, among eight schools that participated. When the school presented its projects at the all-island final, Mother Sri Lanka realised that the school does not have a computer. Hence, this school has been selected as the first school to launch the Mother Sri Lanka-Commercial Bank community project.
Another four schools in the Anuradhapura, Puttalam and Kurunegala districts have been identified by the project to receive computer labs. Other schools that need such assistance may make a request to the Mother Sri Lanka programme.
“Enhancing the IT knowledge of school children is vital for their individual, as well as the country’s progress,” said Mahendra Amarasuriya, Chairman of Commercial Bank’s CSR Trust. “IT skills will help everything children do in the future, from higher education to employment.”
“We recognised that although IT is a subject in the school syllabus, many schools in rural areas do not have the necessary equipment to teach the subject effectively. Therefore, we decided to fund this project which we consider as an investment in the future of the children of Sri Lanka,” Amarasuriya added.
