Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement
The organizer was D. A. Abeysekera, an employee of the Sri Lankan Department of Rural Development, who while searching for solutions for this kind of community coined the term Shramadana , meaning 'gift of labour', to describe the type of help expected from volunteers.
As a response to the emerging digital divide issues of rural Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya started setting up telecentres experimentally in 1997.
The program aims to connect rural communities using Android tablets, which the company distributed to 20 families in selected villages for a period of two weeks and conduct internet training.
The director of one of the institutes for sustainable agriculture in Sarvodaya, Nandana Jayasinghe, was about an hour away from the tragedy, in Thanamalwila next to Udawalawe National Park.
After 6 hours he arrived in the town with three 10-ton trucks full of food, water, blankets and other means of survival.
In the following days, he organized the next deliveries, and temporary housing for the population and, along with other volunteers in the movement, helped clean up and reorganize the town after the tragedy.
[11] In total, the movement built 1104 houses, 5593 toilets, 2274 wells, 2450 waste composters, 185 water tanks and 85 playgrounds for the victims of the tsunami.
[10] The Sarvodaya movement tried to get help from recipients themselves, in order for them to feel responsible and take part in rebuilding their own lives.
