In late November 2025, Cyclone Ditwah swept across Sri Lanka. It was one of the most destructive disasters in the country’s recent history — every one of the island’s twenty-five districts was affected, hundreds of lives were lost, and more than two million people saw their homes, livelihoods, and schools damaged or destroyed. The North Western Province, where Puttalam and Kurunegala took some of the heaviest blows, was among the worst hit.

What followed said a great deal about the country. It also asked a question of every business in it: when your neighbours are rebuilding from nothing, what will you do?

A national call to rebuild

In January 2026, the government launched Rebuilding Sri Lanka — a national recovery fund established under the patronage of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to help the country recover from Cyclone Ditwah. It was built as an open effort: individuals, companies, and Sri Lankans overseas were all invited to contribute to restoring homes, infrastructure, livelihoods, and public institutions.

For a company like ours, this wasn’t a difficult decision. We have spent decades as part of Sri Lanka’s story. When the country was knocked down, standing on the sidelines was never an option.

Our Managing Director stepped forward

Our Managing Director, Mr. Famy Ismail, stepped up with a contribution of LKR 50 million to the Rebuilding Sri Lanka effort — and made a deliberate choice about where it should go. Not spread thin across everything, but focused on one thing we understand better than most: children’s access to technology and education.

Because when a school’s computer lab is destroyed, the loss doesn’t end when the floodwater does. A student without a working lab falls behind, and stays behind. Rebuilding those rooms quickly was a way to make sure the disaster didn’t steal these children’s futures along with everything else.

Rebuilding classrooms, not just writing a cheque

A donation is easy to announce and easy to forget. We wanted to see it through to the classroom floor.

Working alongside the Prime Minister’s Office and the Department of Education, the Technocity–laptop.lk team helped identify the schools in the North Western Province whose IT facilities had been hit hardest, and then did the work of actually rebuilding them — delivering, installing, and setting up complete labs, school by school.

Inside each rebuilt lab

We didn’t hand over a few machines and call it done. The goal was a complete, working ICT facility — a room a teacher could walk into and start teaching, and a student could sit down in and start learning, from the very first day. That takes more than computers. Here is what went into a rebuilt lab, and why each part earns its place.

• Desktop computers — one per student. The heart of the lab. ICT can’t be taught by watching over someone’s shoulder; every child needs their own keyboard and their own screen to actually learn. Full desktop systems give schools the power and reliability they need to run for years.
• Large 22-inch monitors. Big, clear displays are easier on young eyes and mean a whole small group can follow what’s on screen. They turn a cramped workstation into a proper learning station.
• Laptops for teaching. Portable machines give teachers the freedom to prepare lessons, move between classrooms, and demonstrate without being tied to a single desk. A lab that can travel reaches further than one that can’t.
• Printers. A lab that can’t print is only half a lab. Printers let schools produce worksheets, exam papers, project work, and administrative documents on site — turning digital work into something students can hold, mark, and take home.
• Large interactive smart boards (75-inch displays). This is the piece that changes how a class is taught. Instead of thirty children squinting at thirty separate screens, the teacher can demonstrate to the entire room at once on a single large display — walking through a lesson step by step, together. It shifts the lab from individual practice to shared learning.
• UPS power units. Power in Sri Lanka isn’t always steady, and a sudden cut can wipe out a lesson or damage the machines mid-use. A UPS keeps everything running long enough to save work and shut down safely. It’s the least visible item in the room and one of the most important.
• Desks and chairs. Easy to overlook, impossible to do without. You cannot run a lab with nowhere to sit and nowhere to place a computer. Proper computer tables and chairs make the room safe, usable, and comfortable enough for hours of study — the difference between equipment in boxes and a classroom that works.
• Photocopy machines, where they were needed, so schools could produce learning materials and paperwork at the scale a busy school actually requires.

Every item was chosen with the same test in mind: does it help a real class, in a real Sri Lankan school, learn from day one? If it did, it went in.

Nine labs, more than ten thousand children

At the heart of the effort were nine schools that received complete, fully equipped computer laboratories — together serving a combined student population of more than 10,000 children.

Alongside the schools, we also rebuilt the IT facilities of the Zonal Education Office in Giriulla — because an education office that can function properly helps every school under its care, not just one.

And many more schools besides

Those nine labs were only part of the picture. Dozens of other schools across the North Western Province received the specific equipment they had lost — computers, monitors, printers, UPS units, smart boards, photocopy machines, and furniture — targeted help to get each classroom working again as quickly as possible.

They stretched right across the zones the storm hit hardest, from Chilaw and Puttalam to Nikaweratiya, Kuliyapitiya, and Ibbagamuwa — among them St. Mary’s Primary Balika Vidyalaya, St. Anthony’s Maha Vidyalaya in Thoduwawa, Wijaya Maha Vidyalaya, and Palaviya Muslim Maha Vidyalaya, alongside many others.

Every handover looked a little different, and every one carried the same quiet moment: a room that had been dark and damaged, switched back on. Behind each is a school and a story of its own — and in the weeks ahead, we’ll be sharing some of them.

Why schools, and why us

We could have contributed to any part of the recovery. We chose classrooms on purpose.

We have spent our working lives putting computers into the hands of Sri Lankans, and we know exactly what a child gains from reaching one — and loses without it. When we say laptop.lk stands for being trusted, genuine, and reliable, moments like this are where those words are tested. Not at the checkout, but in whether we show up when the country needs us.

Sri Lanka’s recovery from Cyclone Ditwah will take years, and it belongs to millions of people, not to any one company. We were simply glad to carry a small part of it — one classroom at a time.

Want to know more about our role in the Rebuilding Sri Lanka effort? Get in touch with our team.