Read my article in DiGIT.lk on THE BEGINNING OF THE EVILLAGE REPLICATION PROJECT at http://digit.lk/09_april_evillage.

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Here is a line from the last email notice I got from them. This tells it all. “Better than Starbucks… if you like good coffee, great books, sharp wit, and people who read Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain, Marquez, Morrison, Joyce, Faulkner, Cather, Kingsolver and a few hundred other really delicious writers, not to impress strangers, but because they love a good read, then please join us.”

Visited the website of Sri Lanka Railways short while ago. Looks pretty good. It has ample information for the travelers and it is user-friendly as well. Still I did not see a place in the website where you can buy a ticket/book a seat with a credit card though. Hope the Railways will look into this in future. Also we expect the Railways to update the site constantly. I think ICTA also should be given the credits for embarking on projects like this. This what the original e-Sri Lanka master plans talked about. Using ICTs, the people’s lives should be made easy.

As expected, the list of delayed trains is too long. When I visited this was the list.

The train Colombo Fort – Badulla | Fast Passenger Daily | Train No.1005 | will be delay about 00:38:00 Hours
** Expected to Arrival time to destination 17:16:00 Hours
Note : .

The train Badulla – Colombo Fort | Fast Passenger Daily | Train No.1016 | will be delay about 00:23:00 Hours
** Expected to Arrival time to destination 16:26:00 Hours
Note :

The train NO. 7081 . Fast. Pass. Daily – FOT / TCO will be delay about 00:57:00 Hours
** Expected to Arrival time to destination 17:59:00 Hours
Note :

The train NO. 4868 . Mixed . Daily – ANP / FOT will be delay about 00:27:00 Hours
** Expected to Arrival time to destination 14:54:00 Hours
Note :

In my earlier post, I added a picture of now defunct Ashokamala Computer Center, Kadurupitiya that was once the center of attraction by many including the Chairman of Intel. Please see the video below.

The champion who started this initiative, Mr H A Wickramasinghe, the Principal of the nearby Primary School was promoted and transferred to another school and the project was fading away. Luckily there is a new Head Master in the Primary and he has taken over this project now. But they need at least 10,000 LKR to repair the computers to bring them to working order. The villagers say they can contribute up to 5,000 LKR and expect a donor to step in for the rest. The village is a very small village and one cannot expect them to collect more than what they can.

The project has been shifted back to the Primary School and it will run under the guidance of the new Head Master who is a young man from the same area. Hope the donors can step in to help this project to be back on its feet. We will help them to gain sustainability once they can resume the work. Horizon Lanka will train one or two of Ashoka Mala youth to work as the trainers in Kadurupitiya.

Now Defunct Kadurupitiya Telecenter

(More than) enough had been said and written about telecenter sustainability. The word sustainability has become a mantra for many in the field of ICT4D and I cannot disagree with that as we all want telecenters to be self sustainable within the funding period and continue to exist once the funding is over. But what we have to understand is that we cannot make sustainability the only parameter to measure the success of a telecenter though it plays the biggest role. A telecenter may not be sustainable financially still it could offer a bigger services to the community. For instance, think of a telecenter that offers a substantial educational opportunities to a marginalized community in a very rural area where paying for education or services offered by a telecenter is not the high priority of the parents in the area. The best example I saw was Kadurupitiya http://ashokamala.wordpress.com/ in Mahavilachchiya DS Division. This village has a very small population that mainly survive by slash and burn (chena cultivation) and hunting. The Head Master of the only primary school in the village started a small telecenter (first inside the school and then moved outside the school for a better location due to high demand) with the support of the donors and the project went on well as long as he was there. The project never became sustainable but it served to the children in the area so much so that the students who were very reluctant to attend the schools in the area started attending the school regularly simply because of the computer education it offered. (I heard from my friends in India, the number of primary students attending schools regularly increased tremendously after the government introduced free lunches at schools.) Nobody can expect the telecenter operators in a village like Kadurupitiya to make the center sustainable due to the economic and social conditions of the village but there should be a mechanism to subsidize such telecenters by a good chain of telecenters that make profits. Maybe they can form a central fund and provide some sort of financial assistance to those telecenters that run with financial difficulties yet offer a substantial services to a community. But such a fund should not support the telecenters that artificially set up by e-Sri Lanka project just to reach the numbers (500-1000 telecenters) than doing something worthwhile to enable village communities to use ICTs for development. If e-Sri Lanka could identify existing telecenters and extended some true support in terms of finances, equipment, connectivity and sensible training than what they offer now, those telecenters could have achieved both sustainability and professionalism. But this is the last thing one can expect from e-Sri Lanka folks and the best thing is to form an organization to share the experiences and develop the centers further. This proposed organization should be a totally independent organization and any telecenter (including those struggling once e-Sri Lanka set up) can get the membership. If those telecenters are willing to work with such an organization, making telecenters sustainable and productive is not that difficult. e-Sri Lanka folks should give freedom to those failed centers to get the membership of such an organization and get help to perform better. There are very few good telecenters funded by e-Sri Lanka as well and their experiences may come in handy for a converged approach.

www.digit.lk is an innovative online ICT monthly worth reading and sharing. Please share the news with your friends and encourage these young men who are behind the magazine. Above is a video clip of the young Editor, Gihan Fernando.

I am sure the blogging world already knows about this innovative project to help computer/internet users with tech support in Sinhala free of charge. The link was sent to me by a friend. TechKatha.com provides answers to users’ queries using voice, text, etc. The users can post their questions either in texts or as Skype messages. I have to be honest here that I did not have much time to test all the features the site offers and only tested few and find them interesting. So, have a look at www.techkatha.com and test it yourself.

The Prabhavi Online Radio from Weranketagoda, Ampara has been in operation since 2006. The youth who do this have become professionals now so much so that Defence.lk website has taken an audio clip young Asiri Nuwan Ranaweera did on the LTTE attack on Karametiya, Inginiyagala recently to publish it in its website.

You can listen to this radio station by visiting the link http://radio.prabhavi.org.

The Prabhavi Resource Center is initiated by Ajith Karunarathne, a bright academic produced by this village  who resides in USA now with the help of another young man Nelan Dayarathne of the village.

It was a priviledged for me to visit the village in 2006.