IT/BPO Career Guidance Fair - 2009 in Kandy, Sri Lanka

[Gamage Suresh Priyadharshana]

Information & communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka recently held the IT/BPO Career Guidance Fair - 2009 in Kandy, Sri Lanka for school students & those who are interested in IT. The main objective of the workshop was to improve their Knowledge in the IT field. This awareness building program was very useful to our schools students, youths in our area & it was a very good opportunity for all of us.
ICTA gave opportunity to Nenasalas established in the Kandy district to participate in this event. Our ‘Hurikaduwa Nenasala’ is situated in a remote village called ‘Mennikhinna’ in Kandy district. We had various difficulties in promoting our Nenasala services in our area due to lack of resources, economical issues, etc. under such circumstances, this career guidance fair was a good opportunity for us to launch our promotional activities. Therefore we, “ Nenasala” arranged a stall in this career guidance fair. As it is mentioned above, main purpose of kaking part in this event is to promote our Nenasala operations among our community members. Also we considered this career guidance fair as a great opportunity to all Nenasala center operators in Kandy district to promote Nenasala operations and services for future prospects as well. Most of the participants, including lot of school students, job seekers and youths visited our ‘Hureekaduwa Nenasala stall and found that our services are valuable and useful to them. One of the most important things is that, they were fully informed about the services that weprovide them.
During the career guidance fair, basically we explained:
• What are the benefits of ITC: ITC has lot of advantages today. Basically our communication has become so easy because of the ICT development. On the other hand, it is said that today we are living in a global village. Once we logged in to internet, we are open to the whole world. Only thing that we should do is fully competent with using a computer and internet.
• Who we are (Hurikaduwa Nenasla): We, Hurikaduwa Nenasala is a telecentre established in the “Mennikhinna” village. Hirikaduwa Nenasala is a product of the project e-Sri Lanka Initiative, launched by ICTA
• What we do: we provide ICT services to the community in our area and help them to use ICT services
• What are the services that we provide: we have a wide range of services. Basically we conduct IT training courses for the school Children in our area. Also we provide Internet facility to the community in a reasonable rate. Telephone Facilities, Fax facilities and Photo copying, Type setting, Print outs are also available in our Nenasala.

We would like to thank ICTA for arranging such an amazing IT exhibition in Kandy. And we really appreciate their tremendous support to develop ICT among rural communities.