India has much to learn from Sri Lanka 
India has much to learn from Sri Lanka
“India has much to learn from Sri Lanka”, Founder and Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation Osama Manzar said.
 |
| Osama Manzar |
Delivering his address on the occasion after presenting the certificates to those responsible for the13 projects Manzar, who has also authored books including ‘e-Content: Voices from the Ground (www.econtentworldwide.org)’ , said that although India was in some ways considered to be an IT giant in the use of IT for development his exposure to Sri Lankan e-content projects presented at the last Manthan Award convention held in New Delhi in mid-October convinced him that India had much to learn from Sri Lanka.
A Member of the Steering Committee at Global Alliance for Briding Digital Divide, Manzar, said that he was humbled by the brilliance manifested by Sri Lanka in the e-content projects presented not only in New Delhi about three months before at the last Manthan Award Convention but also by the presentations made on the day of his visit which he was making to felicitate the 13 nominees even though it was belated and overdue by about three months.
Osama Manzar, who is also the current Chairman at the Manthan Award for Best e-Content in India, and the audience viewed on this occasion the presentation of three innovative ICTA-initiated projects.
The Tri-lingual Disaster Alert System project uses digital radio for displaying on public display boards in Sinhala, Tamil and English the information received through traditional FM Radio transmission. The Community Empowerment Project in Horana – another of the projects presented - aims at providing the youth with opportunity for developing in IT-based graphic designing and learning English. Under this project the youth are trained to create graphic movies with sound tracks on local stories using 3D movie making software. The youth are also given weekly classes in English and linked to a school in Colombo.
 |
| Digital Empowerment Foundation Founder and Director, Osama Manzar at a felicitation ceremony in connection with 13 ICTA-initiated projects shortlisted for presentation at the last Manthan Award Convention |
One of the distinguished participants at this felicitation ceremony, Venerable Mettavihari Thera of the Linux Centre, was so impressed by the presentation comprising an audio-visual 3D animation clip by a 14-year old that he expressed willingness to contact such children for producing similar work in his programmes. ICTA e-Society Programme Head, Chitrangani Mubarak said that providing an opportunity for developing rural talent was a clearly intended aim of the Agency’s e-Society Programme. She added that the bottom -up approach of the Programme helped to bring about projects which met the needs of the people. Another project that was presented on this occasion won the hearts of the audience. That was the project for digitising texts from the ancient ‘Ola’ manuscripts. A video presentation documented the techniques used in preparing the ‘ola leaf’ from the tender palmyrah leaf.
Altogether 23 applications from Sri Lanka had been submitted to the Manthan Award and 18 of them were shortlisted and the relevant proponents invited to participate at the New Delhi Manthan Award Convention. Out of these 18 Sri Lankan nominees 13 represented ICTA initiated projects.
Osama Manzar said that it was a great achievement for Sri Lanka that out of 300 entries from counties in South Asia 18 projects from Sri Lanka had won nomination for the Award.
Three Sri Lankan projects won the Manthan Award. They were as follows: -
Digital Talking Books: Information Accessibility for the Print Disabled (initiated by ICTA), the Dambadeniya Community Radio Project, and the Government of Sri Lanka’s Gemidiriya project.
The Manthan Awards are granted for projects that aim at raising the standard of life of people, especially the rural masses by the use of Information and Communication Technology. The Award is an initiative of the Digital Empowerment Foundation with strategic support from the Department of Information Technology, Government of India and the World Summit Award Austria. With effect from 2008 the Manthan Award was extended to other countries in the region and is now the Manthan Award South Asia.
The Award recognises the best e-Content for Development and this year applications were invited from e-Content innovators, practitioners and creators across South Asian Countries. Individual participants, organizations as well as individuals seconding nominations for grassroots practitioners from countries in the region were also invited to apply. The requirement was that they be engaged in pioneering work in developing, creating and disseminating digital content, be it online or offline, for grassroots empowerment and development in daily life.
Speaking further on the occasion the chief initiator of the extension of the Manthan Award from India to the whole of South Asia said that the whole South Asian region could benefit from this exercise in promoting ICT and digital content for development since the countries in the region shared common characteristics.
“In the past there was a time when technology for rural development was associated with an elitist class. It was as if the technologists said: ‘We know everything”. This top-down approach must be replaced by the down-up one. Technology should not be looked at like charity that is dolled out, out of the magnanimity of the technologist”, Manzar added.
http://www.thebottomline.lk/2009/03/11/Techno%2016.htm
Share Link: 
