Beginning of the beginning - Horizon Lanka’s Story

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Beginning of the beginning - Horizon Lanka’s Story

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Mr Nandasiri Wanninayaka was appointed as an English Teacher to Saliya Mala Public School in Mahavilachchiya
in January 1997. When he came to the school, the students had missed a
proper English teacher for several years. To fill the vacuum faster, Mr
Wanni started some new methods of teaching which the school authorities
didn’t like. However, new methods paid off well as students started
passing Ordinary Level exams with flying colors and winning provincial
awards.

Mr. Wanni asked the students to maintain diaries or journals in
their exercise books and write essays everyday. Then students were
encouraged to start a wallpaper in the school named “Wild Flowers.”
Later, Mr Wanni directed children to post the good essays to National
English weekend newspapers. But none of the essays appeared in the
press as students from a rural village like Mahavilachchiya could not
compete with the students from elite schools in Colombo. They dominated
the junior sections of English newspapers.

Mr Wanni never takes “NO” for an answer. He asked the students to
publish their own English newspaper!!!!!! How could they do that? They
didn’t have even an English typewriter in the school. But Mr Wanni had
already taught the children to write neat handwriting which enabled
them to win provincial awards. Why not handwrite a full newspaper?
Ideas looked crazy for many but the students and Mr Wanni stayed after
school for few evenings and the result was a neatly handwritten newspaper. The name of the newspaper was “Horizon.” Its theme was “the wider the horizons, the greater the understanding.”

Students were encouraged to send copies of the journal to
educational authorities but the students didn’t get any positive
answers. Instead, Mr Wanni was warned “not to publish the newspaper
anymore” by the then Provincial Educational Director. He didn’t know
that the newspaper carried simple articles about the children
themselves, school, teachers, village, etc. Few senior students wrote
articles about international affairs. One such article was then
disgraced US President Mr Bill Clinton.

Having had the negative feedback from educational authorities, Mr
Wanni asked the senior students to send photocopies of the article to
few embassies in Colombo. All were surprised to hear that then US
Ambassador, Mr Shaun O’Donelly himself had responded by promising to
donate a used 486-model PC (which ran Windows 95), a dot matrix printer
and an electronic typewriter.

With all these new technology coming in Horizon English newspaper
became a nicely formatted newspaper with MS Word. Mr Wanni learnt
computers at night and taught the students in the morning. Students
were very keen to learn computers and English with by using the new
equipment.

Unfortunately, other English teacher and the principal did not like
the publicity Mr Wanni got and they started creating troubles at the
school. Mr Wanni had great patience but when the above two started
punishing the students physically, he thought of saying good-bye to the
job. He had already met the Zonal Education Director twice before to
solve the problem amicably but having had negative responses, third
time he tendered resignation from the teaching job.

Students and parents got together and asked Mr Wanni to keep
teaching at his home and thus began the Horizon School, named after
English newspaper children published, and later became the Horizon
Lanka Foundation. Mr Wanni had to teach computers and English under a
huge mango tree in his garden without a computer since the equipment
donated by the US Embassy had to be abandoned in the Saliya Mala public
school.

Luckily, due to an article written by Gamini Akmeemana about this miserable story to IPS website, which was later produced in LAcNet
newswire, Mr and Mrs Gaminitillake who then lived in Japan had read the
article and donated a Pentium I PC and a brand new dot matrix printer.
With their arrival to Mahavilachchiya most of the other donors and
well-wishers also started visiting Mahavilachchiya and chipped in
helping Horizon.

Thus, Horizon was established in 1998 because of the determination of a
group of children from the rural village of Mahavilachchiya. Their
thirst for knowledge and educational advancement led them to the door
of Mr. Nandasiri Wanninayaka (now CEO of HL Foundation), their former
English teacher in the public school.

Thus began an after school club providing children further education
in English and computers. It has become a popular place for many
children of the village. Since 1998, the Horizon Lanka Foundation has
branched out. As well as providing an all round education to the
village children at Horizon Lanka Academy, they have expanded into the
Information Age and now service the entire community with their
computer lab, which has 24h Internet access. In 2001, the website www.horizonlanka.org was launched by the children of Horizon Lanka Academy, opening a window to the world.

Horizon Lanka Foundation is also responsible for beginning a
project, which is bringing PCs to the homes of the villagers of
Mahavilachchiya. So far more than 30 homes have been furnished with a
computer and this is increasing monthly. MicroScholarships is a project
of the Horizon Lanka Foundation that aims to help deserving students in
their education. Many capable students in rural Sri Lanka are forced to
interrupt their schooling because of financial difficulties.
MicroScholarships ensure that every child covered under the scheme gets
a quality education and a happy childhood. Under it, volunteers offer
financial assistance that gives the child a small amount of money every
month.

Horizon Lanka have fought against all odds to bring the Information
Age to the small rural village of Mahavilachchiya in Sri Lanka. Our
efforts, funded purely by kind donations and sponsorships, are now
providing around 100 students of the village with computing skills,
access to the Internet, PCs in their homes, an Academy to improve their
education specializing in ICT and English and most importantly we are
giving the children and community fresh hope for their futures.