Dialog MAS Enabler Program offers corporate immersion to persons with disabilities

• Two-week pilot program supports university students with disabilities to gain corporate experience

Sri Lanka’s premier connectivity provider, Dialog Axiata PLC and apparel manufacturing and technology conglomerate, MAS Holdings, recently introduced the Dialog MAS Enabler Program to support university students with disabilities gain experience in corporate settings. Nine students, including undergraduates and new graduates from the universities of Colombo, Peradeniya, and Sri Jayawardenapura, with visual, hearing and physical impairments were hosted at the two companies for a two-week period, and exposed to different parts of each business, ranging from operations, product creation, manufacturing to corporate offices and customer service centres.

Recognising the diverse abilities of potential new entrants to the nation’s workforce, Dialog and MAS established the Dialog MAS Enabler Program as a pilot study to not only support the selected students in their professional development, but also to understand how better organisations could prepare and equip themselves to enable employees with disabilities to experience inclusive workplaces. 

The program kicked off with an opening session held at the Dialog Auditorium, where the students were welcomed and received a briefing about the program. The students spent the next two weeks attending immersion sessions in different business units of the two companies, including receiving exposure at customer facing service centres at Dialog, understanding the product creation and manufacturing processes at MAS, and central corporate offices at both companies. 

The students were also able to engage with the MAS Adaptive Centre of Excellence, which is home to its recently launched adaptive apparel solution, Lable by MAS. The two-week program was concluded with an event attended by MAS Chairman and Co-founder, Deshamanya Mahesh Amalean and Dialog Group Chief Executive Officer Supun Weerasinghe, where the students were able to share their learnings with the audience.

Commenting, Supun Weerasinghe said, “Dialog continues to be committed to building an organisation that nurtures diverse talent, equitably and inclusively, and the Dialog MAS Enabler Program is an important step in furthering disability inclusion in Sri Lankan workplaces. We’re proud to have collaborated with MAS for this pilot program and look forward to working with other likeminded corporates to foster further change in our community.”

MAS Holdings Group Sustainable Business Director Nemanthie Kooragamage added, “Through the MAS Plan for Change, we are committed to fostering diversity and inclusion in our workplace, and have been working with to empower colleagues with disabilities within our organisation as well as in our communities. Our efforts are focused on the four areas of employ, enable, engage and empower, and we operate a supported employment officer network that is based on learnings from global best practices. We are encouraged by the immense potential that we see in the students we were able to support as part of the Dialog MAS Enabler Program, and we are grateful for the feedback they have given us that will undoubtedly help both organisations to better equip ourselves as inclusive workplaces.” 

As leading private sector employers in Sri Lanka, Dialog and MAS have come together to further their shared vision towards the inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities. The Dialog MAS Enabler Program remains the first step of a journey towards inclusion that involves not only the economic empowerment, but also shifting the social dialogue around persons with disabilities.