SLT sponsors book distribution for 6th year

Sri Lanka Telecom, the nation's number one integrated telecommunications service provider partners with the Asia Foundation for the 6th consecutive year, by renewing its sponsorship of the Asia Foundation's Book Program. Mrs. Leisha De Silva Chandrasena, Chairperson, SLT, handed over the sponsorship cheque to Nilan K. Fernando, the Country Representative of the Asia Foundation at the SLT Headquarters recently.

From left to right: Mrs. Sharmini Nagendran, Books Officer - Asia Foundation, Anton Nallathamby, Director - Books for Asia Program, Asia Foundation, Nilan K. Fernando, Country Representative - Asia Foundation, Mrs. Leisha De Silva Chandrasena, Chairperson - SLT, Mrs. Vijitha Ratnayake, Deputy Chief Corporate Officer - SLT and Pradeep Carvalho, Manager Corporate Brand Management - SLT.

SLT and the Asia Foundation embarked on this book program for the first time in 2004, as a part of the Foundation's ongoing "Books for Asia" initiative.

Ever since, SLT has been partnering with the Foundation every year in line with one of the company's main Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, "Spreading the wealth of knowledge", with the aim of stimulating curiosity, fostering knowledge, and improving literacy levels.

Through this program, the two organisations continue to work together to enhance child, adult and professional education through the provision of educational material on a diverse range of subjects such as Science, Geography, Arts, Engineering and English Language among others.

For the very first time in the history of both SLT and the Asia Foundation, Braille books were distributed last year to the Ceylon School for the Deaf and Blind at Ratmalana.

Each year, over 100,000 books, are distributed to libraries in various institutions such as schools, universities, public libraries, professional institutions, government education institutes as well as religious institutions.

Last year, SLT supported the distribution of a total of 120,000 books, while this year, plans are under way to distribute an estimated 130,000 books.

The focus of the program for the year 2009 will be mainly on spreading the wealth of knowledge in English Language and Information Technology in line with the declaration made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa that the year 2009 is the year of English and IT.