Special program commemorating friendship at Nawala Open University Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Commencing at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday, 30 July with a basic Yoga connected introduction on mind, body and universe alignment, carried out by Jaffna University, Hindu Civilisation Department senior academic on Yoga Studies, S. Ramanarajah, a special program to celebrate the concept of friendship will be held at the Nawala Open University premises.

The program is primarily for the students and academics of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as other departments within the university. The program is initiated by Frances Bulathsinghala, visiting academic in mass communication of the Open University and held under the patronage and support of the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Anton Piyaratne. Project assistance is provided by staff academic and coordinator Cecil Hilary and students of the university, Mahesh and Zainab. 

The program commemorating Friendship Day is an initiative reflecting the essence of both Mass Communication as a subject and the concept of Creative Communication, celebrated in friendship for national unity, peace and harmony. The event will feature four practitioners connected with literature, bio diversity food, climate and health security, and art, respectively. 

The program will run parallel to the first lecture of the Creative Communication subject for this year under the stream of mass communication of the BA Degree program in Social Sciences. The purpose of the Creative Communication subject introduced seven years ago by the Mass Communication Department of the Open University of Sri Lanka, to show how art, poetry, novels and short stories were used to link human beings across cultures and shaped civilisations. 

The Creative Communication subject provides a backdrop for learning how influencing of human rights focused policies were carried out throughout the world purely through art and literature – tracing the sociological changes of the Renaissance, Industrialisation, Slavery, the Halem Renaissance, the Civil rights movement, Anti-Apartheid movement, feminist movement and the Aboriginal struggle for identity through creative communication.  The program organised for celebrating the day of friendship and similar programs planned out for August, will seek to bring together students as well as academics of diverse faculties of the Open University to creatively broaden their capacity, thinking and productivity. This is hoped to strengthen the concept of integrated knowledge. 

Opening the mind to creativity through arts and literature and combining with diverse other technical forms of disciplines fuses one form of knowledge to another, encouraging the mind to create practice based innovations. It is expected that this could have a direct impact and chain effect in the university system of Sri Lanka creating not job seekers but job givers.