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Good practice Imported

NextGen Girls in Technology — Sri Lanka's UNESCO-Prize AI and ICT Curriculum for Disadvantaged Girls

Sri Lanka · Nuwara Eliya · See the Sri Lanka profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 28% 60/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Sri Lanka's Shilpa Sayura Foundation trained 2,482 school students, 566 teachers and 418 university students in coding, IoT, machine learning and AI, winning the 2020 UNESCO Prize for Girls' and Women's Education before extending an AI track to disadvantaged Nuwara Eliya schools.

2,482 students
School students trained (first two years)
566 teachers
Teachers trained (first two years)
418 students
University students trained (first two years)
1,968 students, teachers and university students combined
COVID-19 online phase beneficiaries (from April 2020)
<8 %
Sri Lankan girls studying ICT as a major subject (baseline)
NextGen Girls in Technology — Sri Lanka's UNESCO-Prize AI and ICT Curriculum for Disadvantaged Girls NextGen Girls in Technology — Sri Lanka's UNESCO-Prize AI and ICT Curriculum for Disadvantaged Girls

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Shilpa Sayura Foundation
Period
2018-2024
Keywords
education, ICT skills, gender equity, nonprofit

Context

Sri Lanka's Shilpa Sayura Foundation runs NextGen Girls in Technology, a blended online/in-person curriculum that teaches coding, the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, design and machine learning, addressing a national gap in which fewer than 8% of Sri Lankan girls study ICT as a major subject.

Activities

Over its first two years the programme reached all corners of the country, training 2,482 school students, 566 teachers and 418 university students; during an earlier COVID-19 online phase starting April 2020 it trained 1,318 students, 528 teachers and 122 university students (1,968 beneficiaries in total). Building on this base, the Foundation's NextGen AI extension held its first dedicated AI workshops in March 2024 in the Nuwara Eliya region, an area with a high proportion of students from disadvantaged, low socio-economic backgrounds, using MIT Scratch for hands-on coding and AI concepts.

Results

In October 2020 the programme became the first Sri Lankan education project to win the UNESCO Prize for Girls' and Women's Education, and it was separately recognised as a Champion in the ITU WSIS Prizes 2020.

Conclusions

The published figures are participation and completion counts from the implementing foundation and its UNESCO citation; no independent pre/post learning-assessment data or classroom-practice evaluation has been published to quantify skill gains.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — No public budget figures were found; the programme is run by a national NGO foundation.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — The broader NextGen Girls in Technology programme ran 2018–2024 nationally; the NextGen AI extension specifically began with its first workshops in March 2024.
Staffing & skills
Shilpa Sayura Foundation (implementing NGO), Foundation trainers delivering coding, IoT, cybersecurity and AI workshops., Partner schools and universities across Sri Lanka

Conditions for success

  • A blended online/in-person delivery model that survived a shift to fully online during COVID-19.
  • Deliberate targeting of low socio-economic areas (e.g. Nuwara Eliya) for the newer AI-specific track.
  • Use of accessible tools (MIT Scratch) for hands-on introductory AI and coding concepts.

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding Own resources / municipal budget

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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