Hype Sri Lanka and its role in Activism, Research and Youth Policy for Education Development
View(s):Hype Sri Lanka, is the Country’s first and only Youth Empowerment Incubator. Since its launch in 2020, a team of dedicated volunteers that have steadily been growing by dedicating themselves to the cause of creating a novel development approach of Top-level Youth Empowerment Incubation (YEI) in the national youth development system and to streamline the youth empowerment process in Sri Lanka.
This process is enabled by youth policy formulation and youth infrastructure development, and the facilitation of sustainable inter-stakeholder partnerships in the local youth empowerment framework.
The organisation itself embraces values that are true to the ethos of youth which is to be friendly, energetic and focused.
Over the last year Hype Sri Lanka volunteers have committed, completed and progressed in multiple projects under the functions of Capacity Building, Disabled and Vulnerable Communities Representation, Youth Policy Formulation and Youth Advocacy and Activism. All projects carried out by Hype Sri Lanka aim to change the trajectory of youth empowerment through the promotion of youth led macro level inclusive and sustainable youth empowerment.
Drawing the attention to one key area that Hype Sri Lanka has prioritized and will be also focused on over the next year is work that stems from the research and development of primary, secondary and tertiary Education in Sri Lanka. There is a large amount of inequality and disparity in the level of Education delivery across the island.
Furthermore, the education processes and systems are still based on outdated procedure that has not been restructured from the core and is inadequate in meeting the needs of a modern Economy. The occurrence of the COVID-19 global pandemic highlighted the lack of Sri Lanka’s ability to face challenges and over the period of one year the government and private sector education has done their very best to adapt and ensure that children are supported and that their pedagogical growth does not come to a complete halt.
However, the crisis has also brought many gaps within the education system to the surface. In 2020, Hype Sri Lanka through the use of the Independent Policy Think Tank conducted two research initiatives. The first is a quantitative survey that focused on “The Readiness of the Primary and Secondary Education System to Face the Challenges of the 21st Century”. This project was a philanthropic partnership done with the UN Club of Royal College. Where the UN club committed to donating Rs.50 per response to the Covid Eradication Fund of Sri Lanka. The survey thereafter was disseminated in Sinhala, Tamil and English within Sri Lanka, amongst a sample of educators and students to collect data on the teaching challenges of the national education ecosystem. Through the collaborative effort, Hype Sri Lanka was able to retrieve 111 responses for which consequential reports were being published in correlation.
Following the successful completion of the above-mentioned project, The Hype Policy Think Tank followed up with another survey that was focused on “Pedagogical Challenges faced by academic staff of the formal primary and secondary education systems in Sri Lanka”. This survey was targeted at collecting data from teachers in Sri Lanka and was also published in Sinhala and Tamil languages. The objective of this survey was to understand the obstacles that academic staff face in effective and wholesome education delivery in Sri Lanka and further understand the causes for such within their everyday processes of their profession.
The Hype Policy Tank conducts these surveys to gather information and understand the extent to which the administrative systems must be reformed to fit the needs of modern society. The findings of this survey’s will be included in the National Academic Framework Review on Education (i.e. a Status Quo Evaluation Report) which the Hype Policy Tank will create with the support of credible stakeholders and present it to the Ministry of Education of Sri Lanka.
Currently, the policy tank has drafted a working paper on the public proposal for youth empowerment in Sri Lanka. In which, Education is one of the forefront areas of discussion where the think tank has identified macro issues and have proposed policy recommendations that looks at changing the education system to be able to facilitate a healthier development process of Sri Lankan youth. Over the year 2021, the Hype Policy Tank aims to normalize proactive youth participation in policy and academic discussion.
Thereafter the policy tank will be actively working with the youth development sector, education sector and other organizations to develop policy and plans that would encourage decisive change in education.
- Jeremy De Zilwa, Director of Policy Formulation of
Hype Sri Lanka