Sprout E-course Alumnus Story: Kalinga Gunawardhana

The Handi-mart Project: Sri Lankan Artisans Use Technology to Maintain their Craft

Traditional artisans are often key providers for their communities, however their traditions can be quickly lost in a massproduced and mass-marketed society. Most rural artisans do not have the means to promote their works online or enter the urban marketplace, and their communities suffer economically as a result. Often there are easy ways to use technology that can make an artist more productive, but they need training to do so.

Handi-mart is a social innovation project that responds to this need: helping local artisans sell their traditional artwork by creating marketplaces for them in village, cities and online. It also leverages technology to streamline some of the processes for making handicrafts, many of which have been a part of the community for thousands of years and can be labour intensive. Handi-mart is set to launch in 2014, featuring five artists/artisans, in the province of Bandarawela Uva, Sri Lanka.

By giving artisans the right technology and marketing tools, projects like Handi-Mart empower and economically revive poor rural communities, while keeping traditional and indigenous art forms alive. Project founder Kalinga Gunawardhana has a personal interest in Sri Lankan arts, in his home village and throughout the country. He hopes his project (along with others in other regions) will inspire a global movement to protect and revive traditional arts and crafts.

Gunawardhana is a recent University graduate from Sri Lanka who has been a Microsoft Student Partner for the last three years and is a part of YouthSparks’ micromentorship program run by TakingITGlobal. He attended a Microsoft YouthSpark event in Singapore where he developed friendships and connections that have helped to guide him through the process of developing Handimart, from idea to launch.

After going through TakingITGlobal’s Sprout e-course, his project team had all the tools it needed to launch. “Every milestone in the current project is there because of the Sprout e-course,” says Gunawardhana. “I could not have proceeded with this project without it. It gave me a lot of knowledge.”

“I think every idea needs to be incubated after being refined -- and the [this program is really good for this as well. The project was incubated and is in a really good stage to launch. Anyone can start something, but the problem is [sustainability].”

Gunawardhana found the TakingITGlobal online communities especially useful for finding tech tools that can assist artisans in producing their handicrafts. Being active in the online communities helped him to learn from others’ experiences and even avoid repeating their mistakes. He was also able to access resources on funding. “That knowledge is still helping make this project come to life,” he notes.

Gunawardhana is looking forward to expanding Handi-mart to the commercial community as it continues to sustainably grow throughout Sri Lanka and online.