The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is a self-governance movement in Sri Lanka, which provides comprehensive development and conflict resolution programs to villages. It is also the largest indigenous organization working on reconstruction from the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Founded in 1958 by A. T. Ariyaratne when he took “forty high school students and twelve teachers from Nalanda College Colombo on “an educational experiment” to an outcaste village, Kathaluwa, and helped the villagers fix it up.
Sri Lankabhimanya Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne is a Sri Lankan founder and president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka. He was nominated to the Constitutional Council as a civil representative on 10 September 2015. He received the Jamnalal Bajaj Award in 1991.
Established in 1870 as the Colombo Medical School, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Colombo, is the second oldest medical school in South Asia. It is considered to be the top most medical faculty in the country which requires the highest entry qualification in GCE Advanced Level examination.
The College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka (CCPSL) is the professional association of the Public Health Practitioners in Sri Lanka. The membership consists of specialists in Community Medicine and master's degree holders in Community Medicine. In addition to these professionals, there are members from other specialties as well. This organisation is incorporated by an act of Parliament No.18/99.
Christopher Gregory Weeramantry, AM was a Sri Lankan lawyer who was a Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1991 to 2000, serving as its vice-president from 1997 to 2000. Weeramantry was a judge of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka from 1967 to 1972. He also served as an emeritus professor at Monash University and as the president of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms.
North Colombo Medical College (NCMC) was the first privately funded medical school in Sri Lanka. It started in 1980 with the admission of 100 local and 20 foreign students. The first batch of students began graduating in 1990. Founded by the College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka, Dr. G. M. Heenilame was its first chairman and Dr. W.D. Ratnavelle, its first director. It was nationalized in 1989 and became the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya. The first batch of students of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya completed their five-year course and graduated with the MBBS degree in September 1996.
Nadarajah Selvarajah is a Sri Lankan librarian, writer and bibliographer. Selvarajah has written more than 43 books until June 2017. So far he has compiled 11 volumes of Nool thettam - a bibliography of Tamil books. He has also compiled a bibliography of Tamil publications in various countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. He has also compiled a volume of Noolthettam in English, which contains English publications of Sri Lankan Tamils.
Gunapala Piyasena Malalasekera, OBE, JP, was a Sri Lankan academic, scholar and diplomat best known for his Malalasekara English-Sinhala Dictionary. He was Ceylon's first Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Ceylon's High Commissioner to Canada, the United Kingdom and Ceylon's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. He was the Professor Emeritus in Pali and Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies.
Chandrasekera Rohitha Bandara Bogollagama is a Sri Lankan politician and ex Governor of Eastern Province. He was the former Sri Lanka Freedom Party chief organiser for the Kotte Electorate. He had also served as the Cabinet Minister of Foreign Affairs from 28 January 2007 until he was defeated in the General Elections held on 8 April 2010, losing his seat in parliament. He had a long career in law running from 1976 to 1999, before being elected to the Sri Lankan parliament in 2000 from the United National Party, and then crossed over to Sri Lanka Freedom Party
The University of Colombo currently has seven faculties with 41 academic departments and two interdependent schools with five academic departments. All faculties and schools carries out courses of study and research in both graduate and undergraduate studies. In addition, the university has several institutions that specialize in different areas of research.
Poverty in Sri Lanka is 4%. Sri Lanka's life expectancy and literacy rate are nearly on par with those of developed countries, and even top the rankings for the South Asia region. While all these indicate that Sri Lanka should be experiencing a high standard of living, until recently it has only ranked in the medium category of the Human Development Index (HDI). This is despite the fact that Sri Lanka has been experiencing moderate growth in its GDP averaging 5.5 per annum between 2006 and 2009. One of the reasons is due to its relatively low GDP per capital;. The Sri Lankan government has been successful in reducing poverty from 15.2% on 2006 to 8.9% in 2010, urban poverty was reduced from 6.7 to 5.3% while rural poverty was reduced from 15.7 to 9.5%, and the nation has made significant progress towards achieving Millennium Development Goals on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.
Deshamanya Professor Nandadasa Kodagoda MRCP, MD was the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo.
H. H. R. Samarasinghe, FRCP, FRACP is a Sri Lankan physician, medical administrator and president of the Sri Lanka Medical Council.
Christopher Gunapala Uragoda FRCP, FRCP, is a Sri Lankan physician, author, folklorist, historian and conservationist
Upendra Srinath Jayawickrama (FRCP), is a Sri Lankan physician (endocrinologist) and an artist. He was the founder of the Diabetes Association of Sri Lanka and a professor of pharmacology at the North Colombo Medical College.
Shanthilal Devapriya Jayaratne MBBS, MD Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, Colombo, FRCP, FCCP was a professor of medicine at University of Sri Jayewardenepura and was Chairman of State Pharmaceuticals Corporation of Sri Lanka (SPC) and State Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing Corporation (SPMC). Jayaratne is the chairman of National Medicines Regulatory Authority, and former chairman of Sri Jayawardenepura General Hospital.
Dr Sarath Samarage is a well-known Sri Lankan consultant/community physician and a national consultant to the World Health Organization.
Prof Udaya Ranawaka is a Senior Consultant Neurologist to the North Colombo Teaching Hospital(NCTH), Ragama and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya,
Carlo Fonseka was a Sri Lankan physician, academic and political activist. He was a former dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya and a former president of the Sri Lanka Medical Council.
