Our ICT after-school classes continue to expand under the tuition of MCTC teachers Nimeshika and Thushari.

Pictured are some of the grade-eight students from Nimeshika's new class, which runs from 11am to 2pm every Saturday. 

This has now broadened out from students at nearby rural schools Osuwinna and Ranminithenna to include those at two of the town's largest schools - Debarawewa President's Primary College (DPPC) and Debarawewa Central College.

In late April, MCTC students benefitted from the expertise of a new volunteer when UK-based Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Martin Wilks visited Sri Lanka. 

Martin spent time helping grade-nine students from Mahasenpura School to improve their proficiency with computers. This included showing them shortcuts to speed up creating and formatting documents.

He also visited Osuwinna School where he ran an English class, helped the grade-four students with some art and most importantly of all, taught the children how to make paper airplanes. 

We would like to thank Cate Thomas, plus her partner Ron Sidell and brother John Skutsch for their ongoing support.

Once again, they have renewed funding for the Montessori School they originally built in 2010. This is situated in the Lunugamvehera district of Uva Province, close to our base just down the road in Tissa. 

The pre-school continues to go from strength to strength under the leadership of the head teacher Sunethra Malkanthi and her assistant teacher Githmi Sanjana whom they are sponsoring. 

The first batch of 16 students who completed our six-month Environmental and Tourism Awareness Course sat their exam towards the end of January.

The image left was taken by one of the students, Pawani, celebrating the end of the 1.5 hour exam. 

There were two papers in total: one multiple choice paper and one requiring answers to 20 questions about the seven modules the students completed last year. These spanned biodiversity to geodiversity. 

The course also included practical field trips to nearby national parks.