Telecenters of Sarvodaya are designed to reach the ‘last mile’ of connectivity, across the digital divide. Today we are using WiFi technology to experiment with two Virtual Villagers are set up in Gampaha and Nuwara Eliya. The second Virtual Village was opened on the 12th of March, at Kuda-oya, Nuwara Eliya. Visiting Scholars like Professors Samaranayake and Weerasinghe met the local community, to see what they thought of ICTs. Everyone was looking forward to interacting with ICTs like Digital Cameras and Laptop computers which could be mobile within the WiFi enabled hilly terrain.
The Telehut, which is a local model of a Telecenter will work as the village hub to network with other 31 Telecenters established around Sri Lanka. The IDRC funded Virtual Village project is much of a research project, as Techonological and Sociological Research are underway with the three key project partners, University of Colombo School of Computing; Agri Business Center of University of Peradeniya and Center for Womens Reserach. In this endeavour Sarvodaya is combining its 48 year long community development experinces with 9 years of ICT4D experiences. The goal is to enable the Virtual Villages in this novel experiment.
