May 25, 2005, Colombo. Sarvodaya & CISCO Systems (USA) signed an agreement today to develop and implement an effective information technology infrastructure for Sarvodaya’s development activities. Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, Executive Director of Sarvodaya, and Mr. John Saliling, Managing Director of CISCO’s International Business Solutions Group (IBSG) Asia Pacific signed the MoU on behalf of the two organizations.
All smiles after signing the MoU. From left to right are: Ms. Thilakshi Silva (Project Coordinator, Sarvodaya), Prof. Rohan Samarjiwa (IT Advisor to Sarvodaya), Mr. Darren Scott (Director IBSG Asia Pacific), Mr. John Sililing (MD Enterprise IBSG Asia Pacific) and Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne (Executive Director, Sarvodaya), Mr. Ravi Ariyawickrama (Director, Social Porgrammes, Sarvodaya) and Mr. Mihindra Alponsu (Project Coordinator, Sarvodaya)
This partnership will go a long way towards enabling Sarvodaya to achieve its vision of eventually networking all villages where Sarvodaya is active, and utilizing ICT to effectively to manage, implement and monitor their development activities. The overarching goal is to empower people at the grassroots to utilize ICT to make their own development decisions.
Ravi Ariyawickrama, Director, Social Programmes, Sarvodaya demonstrates Sarvodaya’s tsunami database system to CISCO consultants.
Mr.John Saliling, MD Enterprise IBSG Asia Pacific and Mr. Darren Scott, Director IBSG Asia Pacific, held discussions on May 25th and 26th with Sarvodaya management and district coordinators. They gathered information about Sarvodaya’s day-to-day operations at the field level, and presented their preliminary observations and thoughts. They also toured the Sarvodaya Headquarters and learnt about how Sarvodaya is currently using ICT in its activities. The CISCO officials were appreciative of Sarvodaya staff’s enthusiastic participation and its current IT infrastructure.
Sarvodaya District Coordinators meet with CISCO consultants
This visit is the first of many, during which CISCO will help Sarvodaya develop the infrastructure and in-house capacity to effectively utilize ICT for development. We at Sarvodaya look forward to working with such an esteemed organization, and are grateful for their support, as well as to Prof. Rohan Samarajiwa for facilitating the CISCO and Sarvodaya partnership.