Digital Literacy Assessment Carried out in Vanni
The Gate Foundation, UK and the University of Sri Lanka have completed a comprehensive study to assess the level of digital literacy among people between the ages of 12 and 40 in the Vanni region. This assessment was carried out in phases in August 2023 in three districts of the Vanni region: Mullaithivu, Mannar and Vavuniya.
This assessment was conducted to collect information on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the people of Vanni and their level of digital literacy and access to digital technologies.
More than 40 Vavuniya University students did this assessment. Along with them, the lecturers of Vavuniya University and the officials of The Gate Foundation were also present. To have a 99% confidence level and 2.5% margin of error in this study, this assessment was carried out on more than 4000 respondents between the ages of 12-40 in the three districts. This assessment report will be published soon.
As a precursor to doing this assessment, a pilot assessment was conducted among 125 people in March 2023 in Thanduvaan in Mullaithivu district by Vavuniya University and Gate Foundation.
According to the preliminary analysis of this study, 76 out of 125 people who participated in the survey have a smartphone with an internet connection. Forty-five of them are youths between 12-30 years of age; 27% do not know how to send an email, and 20% do not know how to use keywords to search for information. 53% do not get information about government services on the Internet. 42% of the job-seeking age between 21 and 31 years do not know how to search for job opportunities online- 54% are women.
The above preliminary research shows that a lot of young people do not have the digital literacy skills they need to get the information and opportunities they need to become more independent. It also shows how important it is to do a compressive assessment in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in order to come up with effective and situation-sensitive intervention strategies.
