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| Sunday, 28 August 2005 |
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Business |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Helping budding entrepreneurs her forte by Elmo Leonard Making an impact on other people's lives has long been part and parcel of Ms Gertrude Ira Hewapathirana's lifestyle. She is better known in rural areas where, since the mid-80s, working for the Sri Lanka Business Development Centre and later as Managing Director of Business Management Bureau Sri Lanka, she helped budding entrepreneurs find a foothold in enterprise. Ira said she was "helping women and unemployed youth as a trainer and social worker." Now, grateful for a major scholarship from the Minnesota Colonial Dames of America, by December she hopes to complete a PhD in World Community and Family Education with emphasis on adult education and then, be an even greater asset to people in her motherland. As part of her PhD she has undertaken research to develop intercultural international business relationships for small entrepreneurs operating in Sri Lanka so that they could be linked with small scale entrepreneurs in USA and Europe. Ira to Sri Lankans, and Gertrude at the University of Minnesota, Hewapathirana is on a brief holiday in Sri Lanka. She cut her teeth as an academic at the University of Kelaniya with an Economics Special degree. Then, she obtained a degree at the Post Graduate Institute of Management. Hewapathirana found herself in USA in 1997, being selected as a Humphrey Fellow. Having completed her Humphrey Fellowship she returned to Sri Lanka and went back to the University of Minnesota in 2002. At the same university, she obtained a Master of Science Degree in Scientific and Technical Communication. The tsunami of December found Hewapathirana more occupied with other things than with her studies for many of her relations lost their lives and one is listed missing. Hewapathirana and two other Sri Lankan doctoral students, Upali Karunatilake and Anojini Nagahawatte, decided to help and set up a Sri Lanka Students' Association, in Minnesota University, with Hewapathirana as president. With the help of three organisations, a poor village in Galle or Hambantota in the deep south would soon be identified. And, they wish to raise a minimum of $40,000 to build 20 homes and help 20 families until they become self-reliant. They seek the assistance of donors. Working through volunteers, there would be no administrative costs or high overheads, she said. They are looking for US volunteers who can provide know-how in starting a business, she said. Hewapathirana feels that her goals back in Sri Lanka would not be much different from those of the Colonial Dames, a lineage-based organisation founded in 1891 focusing on historic preservation, patriotic service and educational projects. Her aim in Sri Lanka would be to cultivate friendship and to have a long-term impact on world peace and international relations, Hewapathirana said. |
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