On 25th Nov. 2021, KOICA Volunteer’s Partner day of year 2021 conducted as a virtual meeting with the presence of the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea, Santhush Woonjin Jeong; Country Director of KOICA Sri Lanka office, Ms. KANG Youn Hwa; Ajith Abeysekara, the Director General of External Resources Department and officials from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Skills Development and Vocational Training and over fifty (50) volunteer partner organization representatives in Sri Lanka.
The meeting conducted by KOICA – WFK Division to recognize, manage, share and take advantage of the know-how, experience and knowledgeable resources with the partner organizations.
The main goals of the sharing session were to deliver relevant information about the resuming of KOICA Volunteer program adaptive to the COVID situation in Sri Lanka and to generate insights from the partner organizations that will be useful in recalibrating WFK program’s future direction.
Ambassador of the Republic of Korea stated, “The COVID-19 global pandemic has immensely changed the way we interact our day-to-day lives. But, Korea making all the efforts to extend its technical cooperation towards Sri Lanka and to resume KOICA Volunteer Program without endangering the health and safety of volunteers as well as its partner organizations”.
During the Q & A session, heads of partner organizations show their desire to obtain the services of volunteers, especially for the field of Korean Language and requested to add their organization to the priority list.
The Country Director of KOICA Sri Lanka office, Ms. KANG Youn Hwa expressed her gratitude to all the participants of partner organizations and added, “KOICA HQ and the Sri Lanka office adopting plans to re-dispatch volunteers in lights of the current COVID-19 situation in the country and to introduce new focused volunteer fields in alignment with the SDG goals and the Sri Lankan government priorities”.
KOICA Sri Lanka office has already done the preliminary survey and selected six (6) partner organizations such as University of Kelaniya, Colombo Public Library, Open University of Sri Lanka, Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakshe College Homagama and Technical College Warakapola to commence its E-volunteering program and supported the e-learning infrastructure development of the organizations, in order to smoothen the online platform to conduct virtual classes by Korean volunteers.
The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the grant Aid division of the Embassy of Republic of Korea is the Korean government agency for grant aids under the mission of ‘Leave no one behind with People-centered Peace and Prosperity’.
KOICA Sri Lanka Office has been implementing a variety of development projects and fellowship programs since 1991 and currently supporting various grant projects including COVID-19 response projects to fight against COVID-19 in Sri Lanka in conjunction with the Sri Lankan Government, Korean NGOs, and International Organizations.
KOICA Sri Lanka Office is particularly keen to put more efforts to support the most vulnerable in society to overcome the current crisis.
