Manusath Handa - The Voice of Humanity
‣ Manusath Handa Contributors Portal released – click here to donate your voice.
As told by Rtr. Vihanga Jayawickrama
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”Ralph Waldo Emerson
The strength of a community depends on how willing its members are to contribute towards the upliftment of the lives of one another. Each human being is full of unique talents and capabilities that can help himself as well as others. It is the duty of humanity to use those capabilities to extend a helping hand to a person in need.
Taking a little step towards uplifting the educational standards of visually impaired students, Rotaract Club of University of Moratuwa executed the project “Manusath Handa – The Voice of Humanity” with the objective of helping the students of The School for the Deaf and Blind, Rathmalana and “Abadha Sahitha Wuwan Savibala Kirime Padanama”. The project was empowered by the high-spirited participation of students around the country.
“Manusath Handa” aimed at resolving the lack of educational resources for visually impaired students in Sri Lanka by providing supplementary resources in audio format. With the collaboration of Wijeya Newspapers, selected Wijeya Newspaper articles related to the school curriculum of grades 6 to 11 were converted to audio format by project participants. A collection of articles related to the subjects Science, History, Buddhism, and Sinhala were recorded utilizing the Obi: DAISY audio book production tool.
The very first step of this benevolent gesture was collecting suitable articles related to the selected subjects. Starting on 13th January 2019, a collection of articles was chosen to be recorded. The selection process was immediately followed by a campaign calling for volunteers to participate in the process of recording articles. Rotaractors and non-Rotaractors throughout the country responded to our call with overwhelming enthusiasm. The selected articles were then distributed among participants.
The final collection of recordings obtained consisted of a total of 100 articles, with 38 articles related to Science, 28 articles related to History, 18 articles related to Sinhala and 16 articles related to Buddhism. They were classified according to the subjects and written to DVDs. On 28th May 2019, the project was successfully concluded by donating the prepared DVDs to the targeted school and the association.
“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”Ronald Reagan
Since technology-related community service projects are a rarity in our community, “Manusath Handa” was a novel experience for most participants. However, the immense support received for the project proved yet again the strength of love and compassion of Sri Lankans. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Wijeya Newspapers as well as all the participants and supporters for their contribution towards the success of the project.
Manusath Handa e-library released – click here to visit.
