The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement will host the first part of the “2006 Mobile Workshop for Capacity-Building of Literacy Resource Centers for Girls and Women (LRCs) in Asia and the Pacific,†which is scheduled to be held from 2nd to 9th February. Organized by the Asia/Pacific Cultural Center for UNESCO (ACCU), the workshop is divided into two parts with the first three days spent in Sri Lanka and the next five days in Indore, India. There will be participants from LRCs in Bhutan, India, Iran, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka.
The objective of the workshop is to strengthen the functions and networks of the participating LRCs and improve the capacities of the ACCU-LRC Network through a series of field observations and on-site discussions. The LRC program was launched in 1994 by the ACCU in cooperation with UNESCO and its Member States in Asia and the Pacific region in order to improve literacy education especially for women and girls and help achieve “Education for All (EFA)†in the region. The LRC network in Sri Lanka is coordinated by Sarvodaya and the Non-Formal Education (NFE) division of the Ministry of Education.
The Sri Lankan leg of the workshop will be conducted at two locations. The first day will be held at the Sarvodaya HQ in Moratuwa and will be kicked off by an Inaugural Session that will feature speeches from Dr. AT Ariyaratne, the President of Sarvodaya, Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, the Executive Director of Sarvodaya, Mr. RA Perera, the Secretary-General of the National Commission for UNESCO, Sri Lanka, Mr. Kazuro Iida, the Managing Director of ACCU, Japan, and Mr. Ariyaratne Hewage, the Secretary of the Ministry of Education. The workshop sessions will include presentations that overview the activities of the program partners and discuss the ACCU-LRC network and its previous workshops. There will also be presentations on the EFA plan and NFE in Sri Lanka and about the activities of each participating LRC since the last mobile workshop in 2004.
The next day, the workshop will make a field visit to Ratnapura. There the participants will tour the LRC Sri Lanka office, visit a shramadana camp site and observe activities, and have an overnight stay in homes of Pahalagalvetithura village in Kiriella. They will return to Moratuwa on the third day and participate in discussions about the field visit and engage in further presentations and discussions on LRC activities. The Sri Lankan leg of the workshop will then close and the participants will fly to Indore to take part in the next phase of the event.