Harsha Wijayawardhana worked closely with Dr. Basheerhamad Shadrach—known internationally as “Shaddy”—on the Telecentre.org Academy. Dr. Shadrach led Telecentre.org’s international academy work, while Harsha contributed from UCSC and Theekshana to its academic, technical and multilingual implementation.
Harsha’s contribution
Harsha was a founding member of the steering committee of Telecentre.org Academy Sri Lanka. He contributed to the drafting of curricula for the Global Telecentre.org Academy and advised the Academy on selecting an eLearning technology platform.
In 2010, Telecentre.org contracted Theekshana to host and maintain the Academy’s learning management system. Harsha served as project lead. The work included the LMS, a workflow-based student-management system, Sinhala interface localization and guidance for translating course content into other Asian languages. Harsha also helped author the initial twelve courses.
Regional training and knowledge exchange
Theekshana organized an international LMS workshop for participants from India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The archived photographs below were embedded in Harsha’s Telecentre Academy and Virtual Village project document preserved by the ICT History of Sri Lanka project.
Relationship to Sri Lanka’s Telecentre history
This collaboration continued Harsha’s earlier rural-access work: the Kothmale Community Radio Internet Project, Sarvodaya Telecentres, the IDRC-supported Virtual Village project and ICTA Nenasala training. It extended that experience from physical access and Wi-Fi connectivity into structured international capacity-building for Telecentre operators.
Thailand and the Asia-Pacific network
Thailand was an important meeting point for the wider regional movement in which Telecentre.org and Dr. Shadrach worked. The Asia-Pacific Telecentre Network was launched at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok on 19 November 2008. A follow-up regional workshop on knowledge hubs and networks was held there on 10–11 December 2009; its official report records Dr. Shadrach as a moderator and participation from Sri Lanka and 21 other countries. Harsha’s archive also confirms that Thailand participated in the later Telecentre.org Academy LMS programme. Photographs located so far are retained with their known project context and are not labelled as Thailand photographs unless their venue can be independently verified.
Singapore curriculum meeting
Harsha also recalls meeting Telecentre.org colleagues in Singapore to discuss the syllabus for the Telecentre.org Academy. This belongs to the curriculum-development phase of the collaboration: the Academy was assembling a global curriculum for telecentre managers that participating countries could translate, localize and adapt. The Singapore discussion is recorded here from Harsha’s firsthand recollection. A surviving public programme confirming the exact date and participant list, and a photograph that can be reliably attributed to this meeting, have not yet been located; the archive therefore does not attach an unverified date or repurpose a photograph from another event.
Sources: Theekshana–Telecentre.org agreement, 3 June 2010; ICT History of Sri Lanka profile and project archive; Dr. Shadrach’s institutional biography; and ESCAP Bangkok workshop report, December 2009.