Commercial Bank donates 75th IT Lab

A school with a history dating back to 1870, D.S. Senanayake Central College Uhumeeya Kurunegala, became the latest educational institution to be benefited by the flagship corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative of the Commercial Bank, when it reached its 75 milestone in donating IT Lab.

Established as Uhumeeya Vidyalaya with just five students and renamed D.S. Senanayake Central College in 1995, the school currently consists of 1,650 students and 86 teachers.

Responding to the school’s need of a facility to provide IT education to its students, the Commercial Bank set up a fully equipped and furnished IT Lab under its nation-wide IT education project.

Commercial Bank Director Lakshman Hulugalle, who is also the Commercial Bank CSR Trust Chairman participated as the Chief Guest at the occasion.

Commercial Bank’s IT education project has benefited more than 40,000 students. The schools are provided brand new computers with licensed software. The schools are also provided with computer tables, printers and chairs.

The Bank provides assistance to maintain and upgrade these computer labs when necessary, to ensure that the facilities would benefit students of the future batches.

These donations are funded by Commercial Bank’s CSR Trust which assists the Bank to identify national priorities and deliver a structured response to the needs of the community. Besides its IT education program, the Bank also presents scholarships and laptops to 25 undergraduates each year.

In September 2012, these commitments to the education sector were further expanded with the launch of a national-scale community initiative to take English language education to children in rural Sri Lanka.

Other CSR initiatives of the Bank include healthcare projects, preserving cultural heritage, uplifting the living standards of war heroes and needs-based regional projects.

Being the largest private bank in Sri Lanka, Commercial Bank is the only Sri Lankan Bank to be listed in the world’s top 1,000 Banks consecutively for two years.

The Bank operates a network of 227 service points in Sri Lanka and a network of 558 ATMs. The bank has been adjudged ‘Best Bank in Sri Lanka’ for 14 consecutive years by the Global Finance Magazine, and has won multiple awards as the country’s best bank from ‘The Banker,’ ‘FinanceAsia,’ ‘Euromoney’ and ‘Trade Finance’ magazines.