University to help Sir Lankan villages

11:28am Tuesday 2nd September 2008

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SIX poverty-hit Sri Lankan villages are to get new learning centres thanks to a project run by a Durham University professor.

Prof Joy Palmer-Cooper's Project Sri Lanka is to build centres on the Indian Ocean island's south coast and inland, offering adults and children a learning link with the outside world.

The expansion is funded by grants from the British and Foreign School Society and Durham University. Work on a number of the six centres is already under way.

They will host teaching, meetings and computers.

The first centre, in Ihala Galagama, is set to open in February 2009, with others following over the next three years. The first will include a pre-school, village meeting and training room, library and computer with internet access.

Village children will also benefit from a visit by Durham University students, who will spend nine weeks working in the centre next year with colleagues from Sabaragamuwa University.

Project Sri Lanka was set up following the huge tsunami which hit Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004. The learning centres are the project's first move into long-term community development.

Prof Palmer-Cooper said: "We are all very excited about extending this project to other areas in Sri Lanka and I really hope it will help to empower people to develop self-sustaining computer-literate societies.

"From my experience of visiting the rural areas of Sri Lanka and talking to people there, education and empowerment underpin success in helping individuals and village communities as a whole.

"We hope that by addressing problems such as lack of information, poor computer literacy and infrastructure facilities, we will enable rural areas to improve their capacity to set up businesses and generally explore ways to generate income, leading to long term sustainability."

Charles Crawford, director of the British and Foreign School Society, said: "Project Sri Lanka chimes very well with the aims of this 200-year-old charity. Ever since its foundation in 1808 by Joseph Lancaster, who pioneered the provision of education to the poor in England, the society has supported many projects around the world to provide education where it is most needed.

"We are delighted to carry forward our long association with Durham University by supporting its work in Sri Lanka."

For more information on Project Sri Lanka, visit www.dur.ac.uk/project.srilanka.