While Sri Lanka Telecom provides a national service by building and maintaining Sri Lanka's communications backbone, the Company does not confine its corporate citizenship activities to this functional area. SLT actively supports initiatives in four broad areas: IT knowledge, education and career guidance (with particular emphasis on English Language skills), nature conservation and, finally, support for artistic and cultural projects. In all these areas, SLT is making an investment in society, helping to disseminate modern knowledge, increase youth employment, bridge the gap between academia and industry and protect Sri Lanka's natural environment and cultural heritage.

Education and Knowledge Dissemination
A number of activities in the year under review were concerned with education and knowledge dissemination. Some of the principal ones are discussed in this section.

SLT Strengthen
For some years, Sri Lanka Telecom has partnered the Asia Foundation in distributing books and other educational materials to schools, libraries and other centres of learning. Nearly 200,000 books have been distributed, approximately half of them in 2005. The programme also helps schoolteachers and other educators improve their English skills. In doing so, the programme, SLT Strengthen, addresses a serious national issue, in that English Language teaching has been severely constrained due to a lack of resources and suitably qualified and capable instructors.

Books distributed under the SLT Strengthen programme range in subject-matter from technical texts to schoolbooks at kindergarten level, and are sourced from various donors in the USA.

In July, SLT and the Asia Foundation donated Rs. 1,000,000 worth of books to the Central Library in Mt. Lavinia. Other beneficiaries of the programme included the Rajarata and Moratuwa Universities, the Mawanella Pradeshiya Sabha, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka's Training Centre, Sarvodaya, the Central Province Library Service Board and the Technical College.

Schools Debating Competition
For the third year running, the Company supported an inter-school debating trophy challenge organised by the English Literary Society of D.S. Senanayake College. The 2005 competition was held at the BMICH recently. Twenty-two schools participated in the championship, the object of which was to improve English Language skills and personal development among senior school pupils. The trophy was won by St. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia, with St. Joseph's College, Colombo, declared the runner-up. Royal College, Colombo beat St. Joseph's in the final round of the impromptu debates.

High-Q Quiz Programme for Schoolchildren
SLT, in collaboration with the Association of Chartered Certificate Accountants (ACCA), will shortly introduce a quiz programme for schoolchildren in Sri Lanka. The 'High-Q' quiz will be the first of its kind in the country. Its purpose is to recognise general IQ among schoolchildren. The quiz, coordinated by the ACCA, is fully approved by the Ministry of Education.

High-Q is inspired by research indicating that many intelligent children go unnoticed and unrewarded, largely due to the emphasis on examination performance and the acquisition of educational qualifications at the expense of real education. The quiz is open to all schoolchildren aged between 12 and 20, who must apply through their respective institutions. Every school is encouraged to enter two current students.

The competition will be conducted at three levels and will be aired weekly on Sri Lankan Television for a season of 15 programmes. Quiz topics include the sciences, cultural heritage, the performing arts and IT.

Empowering Professionalism

IPM National HR Conference - 2005
Principal sponsorship for Sri Lanka's national HR Conference, organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of People Management, was an honour that fell to SLT in 2005. The conference, whose theme was 'People: the Leading Edge in Business', was held over two days in July at the BMICH, Colombo. Concerning itself with issues such as strategic personnel and development approaches within the context of defined business objectives, the conference was attended by several participants and was generally acclaimed a success.

CIMA Global Leaders' Summit - 2005
Another sponsorship of importance was that of the Global Leaders' Summit of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. The conference, whose theme last year was 'A Passion for Perfection', was attended by delegates from Sri Lanka and overseas. As Strategic Sponsor, SLT provided telecommunications facilities, including IDD, to facilitate conference registration and delegates' travel arrangements.

Knowledge sharing for the Media
In telecommunications and data communications, fields where scientific and technical advances take place very rapidly, keeping the public up to date with emerging trends and technologies demands specialised knowledge. To help bring Sri Lanka's mass media up to speed, SLT hosted a special programme on Emerging trends in telecommunications business and technologies' for journalists and other media professionals at Hotel Amaya Lake in Dambulla. The programme included a briefing on SLT's transformation, new network developments, international connectivity, trends in mobile telephony, etc.

Reaching Out to Entrepreneurs
Rural entrepreneurs face their own set of unique challenges, one of which is telecommunications connectivity. The nation's premier telecom provider was a prominent participant at the Rajarata Aruna Trade Fair in Anuradhapura on 21-23 July, demonstrating its commitment to serve rural entrepreneurs with a better and wider choice of communications services, from direct subscriber lines to mobile telephony to Internet access.

SLT's presence at the fair, which included demonstrations of the capability of its technology, helped familiarise small entrepreneurs and rural professionals with the number of affordable and effective communications options on offer. The Company also made full use of the opportunity to impart ICT knowledge and provide career guidance to rural entrepreneurs and young people.

Our presence at the Rajarata Aruna Trade Fair in Anuradhapura		Institute of Engineers, Sri Lanka felicitating SLT for its post-tsunami reconstruction work

Preserving Heritage for Tomorrow

Supporting the Archaeology Department
In commemoration of World Archaeology Day, which fell on 7 July, the Sri Lanka Archaeology Department held a week-long programme entitled 'Let's Protect Our Cultural Heritage'. This initiative was adopted in recognition of the need to create awareness of Sri Lanka's cultural heritage and the need to protect it for future generations. The Archaeology Department also initiated a shramadhana campaign with community participation to clean up Sri Lanka's heritage sites.

Another aspect of this project was the printing of 30,000 cards that portray some of Sri Lanka's oldest heritage sites. Each card costs Rs. I0 and is available to the public at the Archaeology Department. The cards may also be purchased at all bookstores in the future. The money used to purchase these cards will be used to fund the Department's future projects. Six tampitta vihara's in the Kurunegala District are also being reconstructed with thesponsorship of SLT.

SLT is proud to support the Sri Lanka Archaeology Department in its endeavour in publishing cards to commemorate the 'Lets Protect Our Cultural Heritage' week.

Partnering with Asia Foundation to distribute books in order to enhance knowledge		Our continuous support for the schools debating competition