SLT, Asia Foundation spread wealth of knowledge

19-Apr-2009

Sri Lanka Telecom, the nation’s number one integrated telecommunications service provider, partners with the Asia Foundation for the 6th consecutive year, by renewing its sponsorship of the Asia Foundation’s Book Programme. Chairperson, SLT, Ms Leisha de Silva Chandrasena, handed over the sponsorship cheque to the Country Representative of the Asia Foundation, Nilan K. Fernando at the SLT Headquarters recently.

SLT and the Asia Foundation embarked on this book programme for the first time in 2004, as a part of the Foundation’s ongoing “Books for Asia” initiative. Ever since, SLT has been partnering with the Foundation every year in line with one of the company’s main Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, ‘Spreading the wealth of knowledge,’ with the aim of stimulating curiosity, fostering knowledge, and improving literacy levels.

Through this programme, the two organisations continue to work together to enhance child, adult and professional education, through the provision of educational material on a diverse range of subjects such as Science, Geography, Arts, Engineering and English Language amongst others. For the very first time in the history of both SLT and the Asia Foundation, Braille books were distributed last year to the Ceylon School for the Deaf and Blind at Ratmalana.

Each year, over 100,000 books are distributed to libraries in various institutions such as schools, universities, public libraries, professional institutions, government education institutes as well as religious institutions. Last year, SLT supported the distribution of a total of 120,000 books, while this year, plans are underway to distribute an estimated 130,000 books.

The focus of the programme for the year 2009 will be mainly on spreading the wealth of knowledge in English Language and Information Technology, in line with the declaration made by the President Mahinda Rajapaksa that the year 2009 is the year of English and IT.

From January to March of this year, nearly 29,000 books have been distributed to 200 institutes, including the distribution of Braille books to the University of Kelaniya, and the distribution of over 2000 books to 27 schools at Tissamaharama. This year, through this programme, SLT plans to concentrate on reaching rural areas islandwide, especially the North and East since development of rural areas require a major investment in terms of accessibility to information, education as well as English language skills.

SLT has been passionate and committed towards providing a more conducive environment that will help to bridge the digital divide in the country by providing easy access to information, and creating equal opportunities for education for all individuals across the island, no matter what their differences are or where they live.