Monday Sep 23, 2024
Monday Sep 23, 2024
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Vijendra Watson presenting ‘Sihinaya Obemai’ tele-drama to SLFEB General Manager
D.D.P. Senanayake to integrate it in the Bureau’s 10 regional training centres
“Give a man or woman a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a man or woman to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime,” Vijendran Watson quotes the famous saying of Lao Tzu. The founding Managing Director of Mobitel Sri Lanka, Watson says he wants to empower talented rural and urban youth equally through education and awareness to make them self-sustain.
To achieve his affinity towards the youth of Sri Lanka, he has established the Selvern Trust two-years ago to support those who are seeking to realise their dreams and aspirations.
Those who are working overseas remitted $ 7 billion a year and it also helped the country to get out of the economic crisis. My main goal is to give back to my country after my retirement and I set up the Trust to empower youth who are waiting to go for foreign jobs
“My main goal is to give back to my country after my retirement. I always wanted to help young people in the companies where I worked. I especially felt that they are talented and capable par with other countries in the world if they are given the correct direction and knowledge rather than giving them money,” Watson says.
During the COVID-19 pandemic and also the economic crisis in the country, he says that the young people working abroad have saved the country.
“They remitted $ 7 billion a year and it helped the country to overcome the pathetic situation. I was in Australia at that time and badly felt the need to support those who saved the country by seeking better employment abroad. If not for them this country would not have risen again from that crisis situation,” Watson explains to the Daily FT about the reason that prompted him to set up the Trust.
However, the pathetic stories which he read about those who went abroad as housemaids, caregivers and other casual workers who were subjected to abuse– physically and mentally -and trafficking also made Watson decide to support them in his mighty way.
“I was reading on how they were abused and subjected to human trafficking and coming back with serious injuries. I found many of these people were lacking the basic knowledge about their rights, various ways that they will be vulnerable to abuse, subjected to trafficking and handling basic activities if they are working as housemaids abroad. I also felt that many people will move from Sri Lanka due to the crisis situation in the coming years. Therefore I wanted to enhance their knowledge to be a professional force in their respective fields,” Watson says.
Prior to setting up the Selvern Trust, his team did spot research and also a main research based in Kurunegala and Ratnapura, where a significant number of people have sought employment abroad. We found out that they have to face many obstacles when working abroad due to lack of basic knowledge and also lack of information on ways that they would be subjected to abuse and human trafficking.
The team has found that many housemaids and caregivers leave Sri Lanka without basic information about their scope of work, their rights, human trafficking awareness, basic English language skills, cultural understanding of the destination country, and how to identify and where to complain about abuse.
“This lack of preparation can leave these individuals vulnerable to exploitation and limit their ability to succeed in their host countries. Selvern Trust seeks to rectify this situation and help this community that brings significant benefits to the country,” he explains.
His research team has also found that the best way to educate them was through tele-dramas as many of them watch tele-dramas but are not much attracted to news and social media platforms.
Following qualitative and quantitative research with returning maids and care workers, their families, Grama seveka and other members of the community, they have produced a 10 episode tele-drama which will provide them the essential knowledge and information in a story form to enable those going abroad to be aware and be prepared. The Drama series is called “Sihinaya Obemai” (The dream is yours) and features Damithri Subasinghe and Udith Abeyrathne. The series has been telecasted on Dialog TV Channel 100 GURU TV. It is also featured on YouTube.
“I met Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara and discussed this program, recently. He was impressed by the content in the tele-drama and directed the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau (SLFEB) to evaluate it. They agreed to integrate this tele-drama into the course content of their 28-day residential training course which is conducted in SLFEBs 10 regional centres. They also agreed to include this in similar courses conducted by private agencies which are registered under the SLFEB,” he says.
Watson, who has over 43 years of experience in the ICT industry, is passionate about developing talented young people and has done so in all of the countries he has worked in. Through the Selvern Trust, he hopes to create new and innovative ways of bringing these objectives to life.
The Selvern Trust is also developing a mobile phone application that would make it easy for urban and rural poor young people to speak English. The app will make it easy for those who can’t read or write English to speak the language. It will use artificial intelligence and a friendly user interface to make it simple and easy, first learning single words and then progressing to sentences.
