About Our Program
This program consists of two projects. The first project awards underprivileged students scholarships, which are approximately 18 dollars a month. These students have been selected by the administration of the school based on their hard work and disadvantaged backgrounds. We have checks and balances to make sure that the money is being received by the students. The second project teaches computer science to curious students who wish to pursue this field of knowledge in the future. We aim to support these students by teaching them the basics of computer science and delving in-depth into various coding languages. On this project, we have partnered with 1 Billion Technology, a software company based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Background
Nishshanka Central College is a grade six through grade thirteen school located in Badalkumbura, a rural area within the Monaragala district of Sri Lanka. This school has over 1,800 students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the students of Nishshanka Central College began to struggle as online learning was extremely challenging because many students simply lacked the resources required for this form of learning. Even when the COVID-19 pandemic ended, students found it hard to regain their lost learning. Then, in early 2022, Sri Lanka entered a political and economic crisis. One major sector hit by this crisis was the agricultural sector, as the government made a rash decision in early 2021 to ban the importation of chemical fertilizers. By the time the harvest should have come, there was widespread crop failure across the country. With this area being rural and fairly dependent on farming, the students at the school were disproportionately affected. Some children at this school are in extreme poverty, to the point where they have fainted in school. We are working to give all these children an equal opportunity and ensure that they have the same opportunities as those from wealthier families and schools.
Radhik Wickramasinghe (Founder/President)
I am a 17-year-old Sri Lankan-American student, entering my senior year at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, Florida. In early 2022, Sri Lanka entered a massive political and economic crisis. With Sri Lanka being my ancestral homeland, as my parents both grew up there, I began to brainstorm ways that I could make a tangible difference to help out those who were disproportionately affected by this crisis. As I began to work on my global scholar's capstone research project, I learned more and more about what areas in Sri Lanka were the most vulnerable to this crisis. I started off the Badalkumbura Student Enrichment Program by raising funds from friends and family, and then on gofundme to give scholarships to the most economically disadvantaged students. While visiting the school in the summer of 2022, I met with the principal, teachers, and students to see what other opportunities these students most wanted. The area that stood out through all these meetings was computer science and coding. After many meetings with 1 billion technology, we organized a new project that teaches computer science and coding to interested students at Nishshanka Central College.
Christian Ruiz (Vice President)
I am a 16-year-old Spanish student, entering my Junior year at Dubai College in the United Arab Emirates. Radhik and I met at Yale University in the USA, as part of the Yale Young Global Scholars program, where we connected and I was fortunate enough to learn about his perspective regarding the Sri Lankan economic and political crisis. Eager to help combat the regional inequality created, I proposed to join forces and provide my computer science knowledge to empower the students of Nishanka Central College.
Since then, I’ve been a core member of the 1 billion technology effort and delivered theoretical and practical computer science lessons every week to avid students in Badalkumbura, making many lifelong connections.