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The future benefits of making Mahavilachchiya a model e-village are endless.
- Children
The work of Horizon Lanka has already seen success by nuturing students into becoming excellent web and graphic designers. All the websites related to Horizon Lanka Foundation have been designed and produced by students aged 14-17. Their creativity is increasing daily and their knowledge is being passed down to younger students. This invaluable training has meant that children for the first time can see a career outside of agriculture, armed forces or garment factories.
Public schools in rural areas have poor resources, meaning that subjects like ICT are often overlooked. By providing children access to computers and the internet, they can learn to use these tools to improve their standard of work and stand them in the same ground as students from city schools. Opening communication links between children from rival schools will bring about better understanding and perhaps a sharing of resources.
- Improving links between the Community and Institutions
- Healthcare
The Local hospital, Doctors, Nurses, Midwives and Pharmacies have very limited means of communication with each other presently. This specific section of the community is probably one of the most important. The future e-village will bring PCs and Internet access to all these services, which will hopefully cut down on time wastage, improve record keeping and provide a better sharing of information. More importantly, patients can begin to seek health advice from the internet rather than traveling to see a Doctor.
- Banking
The community will at last have access to their banks from their homes. Information on accounts and services can be accessed without having to travel and waste time in queues. Like wise for Banks, they will now have access to their customers on line and will be able to get more customers, provide information to customers, employ people in the area, inform customers of transactions or critical information, and provide real time assistance to people that cannot afford a phone call. The institutions will also be able to communicate with other branches that have network capabilities and this link with the Colombo branch will greatly reduce time lost in trying to reach people in different parts of the country or world.
- Information Services
The need for disseminating information quickly is sometimes of the utmost importance especially in a crisis like a national disaster, war or drought. Presently supplying the rural areas with this information has been near impossible. Public information suppliers from NGOs and Government can now access the rural communities. Thus the community will begin to feel less isolated and become more interested in what is happening in the rest of the country.
- Community
ICT in the rural village will benefit the economic community the most. Farmers will now have easier access to wholesalers, weather reports, crop prices, and other relevant information which will facilitate their work at harvesting time and during the year. For the unemployed, access to information from the multi media library and internet will help them in searching for employment. Gaining ICT skills will be beneficial for their future employment as well. Communication between villagers will be enhanced. With access to the web at home and now the knowledge to use it, families can talk with each other using web mail and IP Telephony services like Skype, all without any cost to themselves.
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