Company: Virtusa Corp.
Country: Sri Lanka
Project Name: Uva Digital Reach Project
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Objectives:
The project aimed to promote digital literacy through access to Information Technology (IT), in the quest to help build a more digitally-inclusive society, thereby, improving the quality of life in the communities where Virtusa operated.
Details of the project:
As almost 80 percent of Sri Lanka was considered rural and was acknowledged to have limited access to IT infrastructure, Virtusa’s Digital Reach project sought to improve digital literacy in its schools. The Virtusa Digital Reach team included the Virtusa Sri Lanka General Manager, the Sri Lanka Head of IT, and the Virtusa CSR Team.
The project period was January 2009 to June 2009. In January Virtusa partnered with the Uva Wellassa University to initiate the Uva Digital Reach Project. Initially, the university collaborated with the MoE and the zonal heads of the eight districts in Uva Province to identify 100 suitable schools.
The principals of these schools were then invited to the project launch in February 2009. They were briefed on the selection criteria and were asked to make a case as to why their schools should become part of the project. After careful evaluation, the Uva Wellassa University selected 50 schools.
In February 2009, Virtusa donated 150 computers to the selected schools. Each school was assigned two student champions from among the IT faculty of the Uva Wellasa University. The students provided technical assistance to the schools and had the opportunity to work with different stakeholders. Virtusa funded the student visits.
In June 2009, the first audit took place. Four teams from Virtusa visited the schools and found out that approximately 3,297 students had access to the IT labs. Meanwhile, of the 50 labs set up by Virtusa, 47 were operational.
Though most schools were extremely keen on IT, however, many did not have a set IT curriculum because of the lack of teachers with IT knowledge. Consequently, Virtusa decided to develop an IT curriculum for the schools and was looking into providing IT labs to those schools that were filtered out in the initial selection process. It also leveraged the project to create environmental awareness in all the schools visited. Some schools were, in fact, offered assistance to create eco-friendly environments.
Amidst the many challenges involved in conducting sustainable development activities in remote and rural communities, Virtusa helped catalyze the industry-government-academia partnership that sought to reach out and empower the rural community. Through its Digital Reach project, it was expected to continue to contribute to IT education in Sri Lanka and thus bridge the digital divide. Already, because of the success of Digital Reach, the Sri Lanka Association for Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) decided to model its countrywide community outreach programme around it.