Microsoft ‘Innovation for Impact’ empowers Sri Lankan non-profits

Microsoft Sri Lanka under a YouthSpark grant together with World Bank and Fusion, the ICT arm of Sarvodaya, conducted ‘Innovation for Impact’, a two day workshop designed to educate and provide ICT solutions to improve the local NGO sector with skills that will touch the lives of rural youth.

The workshop which brought together representatives from 23 non-profit organisations from across the island, was held with the intention of educating and building awareness amongst them on the importance and proper use of ICT and how it can enhance their community projects thus being able to train and reach youth with IT skills. All of the NGOs were involved in projects that concentrated mainly on the empowerment of women which was a key focus area of the workshop. 

Experts from the private sector and the donor community were brought in to address the gathering on a number of important issues including how to build capacity, create opportunity as well as how they can collate their work into high impact presentations, which would secure them the right kind of funding from world organisations to serve Sri Lankan society especially women. 

World Bank Sri Lanka and the Maldives Operations Advisor Rolande Pryce, says that Sri Lanka has made some strides to improve access to Information Communications Technologies (ICT), creating opportunities for development. However, she says that much more remains be done.  While successful on several development indicators, Sri Lanka is ranked 20th in the labour force participation gender gap. This is a significant challenge to the country’s goals for growth and equity. With ICT advancements, civil society organisations (CSOs) working on gender specific programmes have greater opportunities to build social enterprises and make a difference at grassroots level. 

“ICT is a powerful transformative tool and it has revolutionised the way people think, behave, work and also advocate for change. The ‘Innovate for Impact’ initiative is especially intended to connect CSOs promoting women’s empowerment with ICT tools,” said Pryce.

The two-day workshop provided participants with the opportunity to learn, network and brainstorm on how ICT solutions could be effectively integrated within existing projects. Proposal writing, basic web development, social media marketing, as well as the fundamentals of using Microsoft Office were included in the areas covered.

Microsoft who works with a number of non-profit organisations to improve the quality of life amongst Sri Lanka’s rural communities has had an ongoing partnership with both the World Bank and Sarvodaya Fusion. In line with that, a special program ‘ICT development for NGOs’ was implemented by the External and Corporate Relations unit of the World Bank South Asia Region and the Microsoft Asia Pacific Citizenship Engagement program and their Sri Lankan ICT4Development partner, Sarvodaya Fusion, three years ago.

Gillian Pearl and Saleemah Ismail from PCS a consulting firm that helps companies to create Corporate Responsibility Programs with a measurable positive impact on communities, customers, employees and shareholders, along with team member Marcus Harvey from Infoxchange, were the main facilitators of the two day event, imparting their knowledge and sharing new ideas with the local NGOs.  

Marcus Harvey said, “What I really like about working with Sri Lankan non-profit organisations, is that it gives us a real opportunity to teach them how to use technology to help build the community and help to find new employment options for the people they work with so that they can earn more money and look after their families more effectively. I believe technology can make a real difference in that, it can teach new skills and it can also make these non-profit organisations much more productive. Through learning to use ICT effectively and cheaply, they can make a huge difference to the communities and we are happy to impart that knowledge.”

Commenting on the workshop, Microsoft Sri Lanka Manager for Community Affairs Janakie Karunaratne said, “It is great pleasure to kick off this event for the third consecutive time in Sri Lanka. This year we concentrated on not-for-profit organisations involved in gender specific work (women empowerment) and believe that the knowledge sharing gained from the workshop will help to enhance their operations making them more tech savvy and efficient and in turn benefiting the communities they impact.”

HelPage Sri Lanka Advocacy Advisor Lionel Preamachandra, who participated in the workshop said, “Innovation for impact is an important subject for all non-profit organisations in Sri Lanka.  The program has given valuable inputs on guidance maintenance especially in regard to organisational development. Therefore this event is timely and would help us to improve our capacity, increasing our efficiency and in turn impacting the way we work with communities. And I greatly appreciate the effort made by Microsoft, the World Bank and Fusion to make this event a success.”

Sarvodaya Fusion Manager Isura Silva, who handles the operations side of the program, said that their organisation’s goal was to support NGO partners by helping them to work better. “A program like Innovation for Impact is the ideal way to help them to enhance their operations through the use of ICT. Together we would be creating employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for educated young women in Sri Lanka. We will work towards this goal and keep track of results which we hope will be innovative and demonstrative examples for others to follow,” he said.