"Our vision is to improve ICT & Language skills to over come challenges of the village community"

www.oasisdamahana.org

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Oasisdamahana Foundation,
Damahana,Balangoda,
Sri Lanka,
info@oasisdamahana.org

After touring   India ........

With the intention of promoting the use of IT in the rural areas of the country, the Ministry of
Education, in collaboration with the Presidential Secretariat launched a pilot e-Village
Programme, ‘Secondary Education Modernization Project II’ (SEMP II), and funded by the
Asian Development Bank. The programme comprising many activities was, initially
launched in the Sabaragamuwa, Uva, Central, Wayamba and Southern provinces.

In order to further enhance the quality of project outputs, the managers of the five pilot projects
have been given the opportunity to attend a conference held in Baramati, India. The conference
on ICT and Development that commenced on the 23rd  March concluded on the 25th.

India is a large country with a large population. Ten days is too short a period to explore and study such
a vast nation as India. But this is a report on observations made during ten days of touring into a few of
its regions
There were about 200 delegates attending the conference from India and various countries in the region
including Sri Lanka. Among the key note speakers were, Sharad Kulkarni, Chairman of the Vidya
Pratistan Institute for Information Technology(VIIT), Sri Subash Pani, Indian State Official, John
Davies, Intel, Asst. Director, and others.

In order to observe how ICT was used to meet development objectives we visited a community radio
station in Baramathi.

         
         Praja (Community) Radio Station

Health :- Telemedicine
Hospitals visited were either managed by the state or privately owned. Among these was the State
hospital in Baramathi Town where we were able to observe how computers were used to diagnose
illnesses. Here, we saw computers, cameras, scanners and printers used for the purpose.

         
A team at work at the Baramathi hospital telemedicine centre

       Some equipment used at the Telemedicine centre

After the conference the Sri Lankan contingent arrived in Chenai city in India and remained at the for Indian
Institute Information Technology (IIT) in Madras from the 26th to 30th February. During this period many
places were visited and the observations made are reported as follows:

Education:-
It seems the Indian government pays little attention towards improving the educational system of
that country. For example, there is a low level of participation of children in the school education system in
rural villages. Those who attend are very weak in reading and writing. The economic problems, a lack
of interest
among adults, and a lack of facilities, seem to be the barriers for that.
In rural villages there seems to be little attention given to applying modern techniques to develop education.
Especially, the use of computer in the field of education is minimal.

             Students of a primary class doing their studies with
   computers donated by a private organization.

     A visit to private institutes
However, an obvious feature was that there were many private educational and technological institutes functioning in the regions. These institutes used modern equipment and teaching methods including
internet exploration.

              A group of women are being trained in a e-praja centre

           Beneficiaries working on computers in an e-praja centre.

       Next we could see a center of making bags with fibre of plantain by the women in a rural area of our
  tour

                                       
        A group of women making bags using banana fiber to be sold on e-commerce