http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/11/village-with-a-mesh-network-but-not-a-single-telephone/

Brand new laptop for village blogger

Seventeen year old Tharanga Sampath is the proud owner of a brand new laptop for being the best blogger at Horizon Lanka Academy in Mahavilachchiya village in north-central Sri Lanka.

The laptop was donated by Dr. Ing. E. Leuthold from Switzerland in coordination with the Lak Saviya Foundation after contacting the Horizon Lanka Foundation in April, Horizon said. Leuthod has already promised to send two more laptops for the next two best students.

What began as an after school club providing children further education in English and computers, Horizon Lanka has branched out, providing an all round education to the village children.

It has expanded into the information age and now services the entire community with computer labs with 24 hour Internet access. Staff at the Foundation describes Tharanga as ‘showing a keen interest in Horizon affairs for the past few months since he joined the Foundation.’

He has recently been given the responsibility of handling lessons for juniors and ‘has the good quality of fulfilling whatever duty is assigned to him with a great deal of preparation and devotion.’ (NG)

Buddhika Prasanna Kumara, one of the youngest bloggers in Horizon Lanka Academy has reached 3000 hits to his blog by today. This is the most number of hits any of the Horizon Lanka student or a staff member has got so far. Buddhika joined blogsphere only on 6th May, 2007. Others had started blogs few months earlier to Buddhika. He was not one of those kids who wrote essays a lot earlier and it was due to blogging he is improving his writing. He was not the brightest in his class either. He was one of the slowest and laziest for academic activities. But blogging has made him keener in academic affairs.

The first thing Buddhika does in a morning is checking the number of hits and moderating comments he has received. He keeps checking the number of hits and comments and writes more and more small essays. This clearly shows that blogging can improve language skills of the students in a dramatic way. We think other students in Sri Lanka also should start blogging and improve English. You can encourage these kids by visiting their blogs and sending comments. You can see more blogs from Mahavilachchiya under BLOGROLL at http://hlacademy.wordpress.com. Thanks to mesh Internet in village houses students are very active in blogging now.

Rural BPO, Sri Lanka

What dreams may come true!

“However, now I am 19 years old and I am confident that we can do something for our village from the knowledge we gained during a period of about nine years from Horizon Lanka.” An article written by Isuru Senevirathna, Horizon Lanka Foundation,
Sri Lanka isuru@horizonlanka.org – July 2007 | Vol. V No. 7 | http://www.i4donline.net

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‘Horizon Lanka’, the model for taking ICT to the rural villages, is a famous word in Sri Lanka. It is also receiving international recognition. In fact, we never thought of creating a model to take ICT to the rural villages. First, we only wanted to develop our village. For this, we had a great hero to guide us. He is Mr. Nandasiri Wanninayaka, our English teacher since 1998. I was 11 years old then.

Mr. Nandasiri was teaching us English in a public school of my village. His teaching method was able to attract us to the subject, although English was a subject hated by most children. Before Mr. Nandasiri it was difficult to learn, as we did not have a teacher who could teach us in a better way. But, Mr. Nandasiri managed to turn the tables. While we were continuing studies, our elder brothers and sisters started a journal called ‘The Horizon’. We wrote stories to that journal and Mr. Nandasiri photocopied them from the nearest town, which is 40 kilometers away from my village. By a stroke of good luck, the US embassy found out about the journal through an article which was written by Mr. Gamini Akmeemana for a public English newspaper in Sri Lanka. The US embassy helped us with a 486 model computer and a dot-matrix printer, along with some computer books.

Mr. Nandasiri started teaching us about computers with the knowledge he gained from reading those books, as he himself did not have enough knowledge about computers. Each student got 5 minutes to operate the computer under Mr. Nandasiri’s guidance. This was a fantastic experience for us children of poor farmers.

With Nandasiri sir’s leaving public school, we were really sad since nobody could do Nandasiri sir’s job there. We did not give up our way. We got together as a team and talked him to arrange an English class for us. He accepted our request and started the class under a huge mango tree in his garden. And we did not forget to continue the journal too. A family called Gaminitillake donated a used computer to our English class and we stared a website with their help and uploaded it from the town. Through the website, we got a big publicity throughout the world. It was a big revolution of us. Lot of donors came to us and helped to improve our English and computer knowledge. Eventually we could build a small computer room with the support of donors and the capacity of our parents. This was our journey……

Today we have a modern computer Lab that was donated by Mr & Mrs. Charles. And we could build a tower to connect to the Internet from our village since we had to travel 80 kilometers up and down to access internet from the nearest city ‘Anuradhapura’.
However, now I am 19 years old and I am confident that we can do something for our village from the knowledge we gained during a period of about nine years from Horizon Lanka.

About ten months ago, I realised one of the dream, in my life. I could travel to two countries for a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) training. I never had been out from this small island. But I was lucky to travel to Laos and New Delhi in India with the sponsorship of ICT Agency of Sri Lanka. During that training, we could see practically their operations and the way a BPO company meets the clients’ demand, on time with good quality. Eventually we ended the training and returned to Sri Lanka with the mind of starting our BPO Company in Mahavilachchiya. After a training period of three months, we had an opportunity to start a BPO company in rural Mahavilachchiya village. A foundation called FARO (Foundation for Advancing Rural Opportunities) is helping us in the initial stage to run the company. Already we have started the company named OnTime Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. John Keells is a major client of us.

We also are discussing with Dialog Telekom Ltd. and Singer Sri Lanka to get some more work for our youth. Around 50 youths are being trained to take up BPO jobs from Mahavilachchiya. Mahavilachchiya has very good infrastructure like a modern computer lab with 512 KBPS internet connection, 50 computers in the village households – 30 of them are connected to Internet through mesh technology – and 7 Wi-Fi zones in the village where you can use your laptops. Through our company, we are offering job opportunities for the youths in the village. This is a big revolution in the village and we are happy to say. This is what we wanted to do. However, we could do it. Now we are using same Horizon Lanka building and Horizon Lanka equipments. In the future, we hope to develop our company as the largest BPO company in Sri Lanka and build a huge building and develop as an our owned company. Nirosh Manjula, who trained with me in Laos and India and I am running this company.

I take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped us to success this journey.

Horizon Lanka Foundation

The Horizon Lanka Foundation was established in 1998 because of the determination of a group of children from the rural village of Mahavilachchiya. Their thirst for knowledge and educational advancement led them to the door of Mr. Nandasiri Wanninayaka (now CEO of HL Foundation), their former English teacher in the public school. Thus began an after school club providing children further education in English and computers. It has become a popular place for many children of the village. Since 1998, the Horizon Lanka Foundation has branched out. As well as providing an all round education to the village children at Horizon Lanka Academy, they have expanded into the Information Age and now service the entire community with their computer lab, which has 24h Internet access. In 2001, the website http://www.horizonlanka.org was launched by the children of Horizon Lanka Academy, opening a window to the world.

HLF is also responsible for beginning a project, which is bringing PCs to the homes of the villagers of Mahavilachchiya. So far more than 30 homes have been furnished with a computer and this is increasing monthly. MicroScholarships is a project of the Horizon Lanka foundation that aims to help deserving students in their education. Many capable students in rural Sri Lanka are forced to interrupt their schooling because of financial difficulties. MicroScholarships ensure that every child covered under the scheme gets a quality education and a happy childhood. Under it, volunteers offer financial assistance that gives the child a small amount of money every month. The efforts, funded purely by kind donations and sponsorship, are now providing over 160 students of the village with computing skills, access to the Internet, PCs in their homes, an Academy to improve their education specializing in ICT and English and most importantly, giving the children and community fresh hope for their futures.

Source: http://www.horizonlanka.org

Here we have high technology facilities more than other villages in Sri Lanka. And our students are getting maximum benifits out of them. That is not a secret. All the things are coming gooood in the village.

BUT…..

All are talking about peace. but i dont understand what is this peace. Becuase at all night we hear boomb sounds from some where. Can’t tell where are they from. But we hear them. Even its not a small sound it is such a huge sounds like Dombbbbbb!!!! It is a huge trouble for us. Specially for our studies. Because most of us do studies at night.

I dont know where and for what, these bomb blast. We don’t hear any oficial news for these from televtions. However it has become a huge trouble for us. Oh!! again just heard a bomb balst sound!!!

HOWEVER WILL HOPE THSE TROUBLES WILL BE FINISHED SOON.

Watch Satellite TV on PC from over 3000 stations with simple software. No messy hardware installation or monthly fee….

Telecommunication

Information Technology (IT) is a new field that thrives today with the introduction of modern techniques in communication and assimilation of knowledge and skills, to suit the fast developing world. The government, with the programme of establishing three “Nenasala Centres” in each Divisional Secretariat area, is aiming to link the village with the outside world under the concept of modern globalization. The whole world will be a global village at the end of the century.
The average villager cannot be isolated from the rest of the world today as new vistas have opened up. There are village lasses working mainly in Middle Eastern as well as other European countries who wish to communicate with their homes. So are the many parents, relations and friends who exchange pleasantries as well as views on matters that affect their day to day life. They would, for instance, wish to know the world price of oil when our prices of petrol and diesel rise sky high from time to time. They have a right to know the world trends in consumable items which have a direct impact on their living. These knowledge and information are no longer the prerogative of a few in power. Knowledge and information is universal.
But have we been able to face this challenge? In the cosmopolitan areas, we can observe the younger generation patronizing the cyber cafes. They log on to websites to obtain the necessary information.
A few make use of e-mail facilities too. But what about the 80% village population? Electricity is not available to most of the rural villages in Sri Lanka which makes them inaccessible to it and other modern electronic facilities.
India has coal powered and diesel powered electricity in addition to hydropower and electricity is not a luxury to them. Remote villages are provided with this facility and India has embarked on a rapid rural development programme. Telephone facilities too are available in these remote areas. There are sign boards everywhere indicating the availability of IT facilities. And these are very cheap compared to our rates in Sri Lanka.
A telephone call to Sri Lanka will cost around Indian rupees 15 to 20 for a conversation of over 10 minutes. The cost of a person to person call from Sri Lanka to India is Rs. 250 for the first three minutes and each additional minute costs Rs. 50.

If telephone facilities are provided at affordable prices it would help create employment among the rural masses in Sri Lanka. The Tourist Resorts could have telephone booths as in India so that it would be a new venture for the livelihoods among the rural youth.
The idea in separating the Telecommunication Department from the Postal Department with the establishment of Sri Lanka Telecom was to provide a better and faster service to the consumer. But in reality this objective has not been achieved.
To cite one instance, when Teldeniya town was submerged by the Victoria reservoir, the auto exchange at Teldeniya too went under water. A new site for the exchange was offered in Teldeniya by the Mahaweli Project, But sad to say Sri Lanka Telecom is yet to start work on the exchange. This is the snail’s speed in which our IT field operates. Let us follow India. The Indian government has identified five sectors in its budget for 2007. The IT sector takes second place among textiles, tourism and biotechnology.
S.B.Karaliyadde
Kandy

Can you start a new page for this thread. It take a lot of time to download the page now.

Not only for e-learning we use this software for communicate with online radio. Using this I could communicate with ahamu radio as an announcer from Horizon Lanka Foundation. Ahamu radio is doing by a Sri Lankan. So I got that opportunity to join Ahamu Radio http://www.ahamu.com live through Skype.

The day which we opened mesh network of Horizon Lanka Foundation was a busy day for me with Ahamu Radio because I gave live news updates, live interviews to ahamu radio about the Opening Ceremony of the mesh network.

I interviewed some of visitors. The most exciting moment was interviewing the Secretary to the President, Mr. Lalith Weeratunga who was the Chief Guest of the occasion. I was lucky to interview for the whole world, trough Ahamu Radio. It was a great opportunity for me. And I think I did my best. Most of my online friends, my sponsors and Horizon well-wishers said they listened to it and I felt proud of myself.

I am doing the radio program from my home in Mahavilachchiya using Skype and I broadcast the news about HLF and the Mahavilachchiya village too on Saturdays with Ahamu. I try to get maximum benefits out of this opportunity. And hope to show that we can do a radio station from here in future. I think in the future we can have that chance also. Looks like that day is very close.