Cross-ethnic Collaboration at a Sri Lankan Telecentre - Barriers for Effective E-learning in Rural Regions

In post war Sri Lanka there is still a big social and cultural gap between the different population groups. English has recently been suggested as the new official common language for Singalese, Tamils, Muslims and other Sri Lankan citizens. But in rural areas today the question is more about how to provide content for training in the different mother-tongues. This article is based on observations and interviews with the owner, manager, operators and visitors at the Haldemmulla telecentre during two visits in 2008 and 2011. The main research question in this article is to analyze and discuss which factors are important in the management of a telecentre in a non urban region with a multicultural and multilingual population. Findings show that the cross-ethnical collaboration between the Singalese owner and the Tamil manager is not one of the crucial problems and something that can be handled. At the Haldemmulla Nenasala telecentre the prime problems are more about the current lack of Internet access and how to keep the best employees when the salaries are far below the standard income for staff in the urban ICT industry. However the Nenasala telecentre in Haldemmulla has found a model that seems to be sustainable and with or without Internet access they have their regular visitors and provide appreciated services to the local community. This telecentre has since its inauguration been one of the best performing in the island-wide Sri Lankan Nenasala network. But the rate off regular visitors has decreased when we compare with the situation at our first visit in 2008. Since teachers as well as teaching sessions have improved we find the lack of Internet access to be the factor that has had an impact on the number of monthly visitors. Internet is today an important source for information in poor rural areas as well as in richer metropolitan regions. Another challenge for a multicultural telecentre is how to provide high quality digital content in the local languages. Sinhala content has been developed and deployed by a Sri Lankan organization and digital learning objects in Tamil might be shared with Tamil speaking e-learning organizations Tamil Nadu in Southern India