Dialog funds Speech Therapy St. Joseph's Ragama students

Dialog Telekom, as part of their CSR outreach programmes, recently made a donation of Rs.300,000 to St Joseph's School for the deaf at Ragama as a sponsorship of salaries to 20 teachers who will conduct extra speech therapy classes for a period of 10 munths, the company said.

The sponsorship cheque was handed over to the principal of the school, Rev. Sr. Jacintha Jayasinghe by A. Manickavasagar, a trustee of Dialog Telekom's "Change" Trust Fund. Rev. Sr. Jacintha Jayasinghe spoke of why such donations were so vital to the school. "Here in this school, we try our best to teach the students to prepare themselves to sit for the government examinations. They are intelligent and capable of doing higher studies, but we need to develop their language capacity. We have a trained and a dedicated staff. However, the school curriculum does not permit the required individual attention and to give sufficient time to the student. The extra time has to be provided to them outside the school hours and this is possible in the form of special classes. We thank Dialog Telekom for coming forward to help us with the funds to pay our teachers, " she said.

The unique feature of this initiative is that this special programme caters to providing individual attention to the students during the stipulated time period. St. Joseph's School has been in existence for the last 65 years and helps children who are profoundly deaf and hard of hearing optimize their listening, language and academic skills, as well as their self-confidence so that they can be successful in mainstream education and become useful and industrious citizens.

Over the past few years, Dialog's Change Trust Fund has supported over 60 charitable initiatives and touched equally the lives of those marginalized in Sri Lanka. Dialog has also identified strategic flagship programmes across five thematic spheres that build on these philanthropic motives and contribute to nation building and development.