WTWLanka
Paboda Maldamandeniya is a community-development professional with over five years of experience creating learning spaces that inspire curiosity and change across Sri Lanka. As Project Coordinator at WTW Lanka, a grassroots nonprofit that transforms learning into opportunity by combining education, digital skills, and creativity, she channels her passion for empowering women, youth, and persons with disabilities. Paboda has led initiatives that turn classrooms and communities into hubs of discovery, including AI-for-Educators workshops, youth leadership summits, mental health and resilience sessions, and programs that open doors for women to build skills, confidence, and leadership. At the heart of everything WTW Lanka does is a commitment to turning classrooms and communities into hubs of discovery, particularly for women, youth, and persons with disabilities.
With our $500 Giving Joy microgrant, WTW Lanka expanded its flagship Career Talk: English for Employment program — a five-month virtual initiative designed to equip young women with the practical English skills needed to access meaningful employment. The program covers CV writing, interview preparation, workplace communication, and professional etiquette, giving participants not just knowledge but the confidence to use it.
WTW Lanka delivered a comprehensive professional communication and career readiness curriculum designed to close the gap between academic learning and real workplace requirements. The program moved participants through a carefully structured journey: a formal orientation and placement test to assess proficiency and match participants to the right level of training, followed by applied business grammar centered on describing professional history and work sequences, then digital professional branding, where participants drafted professional biographies and submitted audio recordings to practice presenting themselves with confidence.
Participants were also introduced to the Interview Formula, professional CV construction, and real-world interview simulations. Soft-skills sessions on time management addressed workplace productivity and organizational efficiency, and the core curriculum built toward advanced training in future tenses for career planning and a high-impact public speaking and presentation module.
The Results
WTW Lanka supported 25 highly engaged female participants — students and early-career professionals committed to building their employability and leadership potential. While the original target was 50 participants, recruitment was affected by intensive academic examination schedules in the region. Rather than compromise quality, WTW Lanka made the deliberate decision to focus resources on a smaller, deeply engaged cohort, preserving the program's high-impact nature.
25 of 25 participants successfully completed the program — a 100% completion rate for the cohort.
Participants who began the program hesitant and uncertain are now able to present their professional backgrounds fluently and navigate complex interview scenarios with confidence. Internally, the program has also strengthened WTW Lanka's own systems, refining how the team manages training cycles, reviews student assignments, and delivers structured virtual programming.
Crossing the Finish Line
WTW Lanka closed out the program with a final push on practical, real-world skills. An intensive workshop on professional email writing sharpened participants' business correspondence, tone, and workplace etiquette just ahead of a comprehensive final exam covering business grammar, interview skills, public speaking, and professional writing. All 25 participants passed, graduating with the ability to handle job interviews and manage professional digital correspondence with confidence.
Rather than issuing certificates digitally as originally planned, WTW Lanka hosted an in-person Certificate Awarding Ceremony and invited participants' parents — turning graduation into a shared family milestone. The event gave both students and families a platform to reflect on the growth of the past five months, and it deepened trust between WTW Lanka and the community it serves.
The impact continues past the ceremony. Graduates now have extended access through December 2026 to daskalos.lk, an online learning platform offering further training in project management, leadership, digital identity, critical thinking, personal branding, active citizenship, and women's rights. Graduates have also been integrated into an ongoing alumni network to sustain peer learning and support well beyond the program's formal end.
The Impact
The ripple effects of this program extend well beyond the 25 women in the cohort. Each participant carries her new skills back into her community — sharing knowledge with peers, family members, and neighbors, and serving as a role model for other young women who have never imagined themselves in a professional role. Recorded sessions remain available on WTW Lanka's learning platform and YouTube, extending access to learners far beyond the original cohort.
At the community level, the program is directly contributing to the economic empowerment of women in Sri Lanka, making them more competitive in a global job market and more confident as leaders in their own right. Inviting parents to the closing ceremony extended that reach even further, building family-level support for participants' ongoing educational and professional ambitions and reinforcing the case for female workforce readiness within the community.
The curriculum built for this cohort — including the email-writing workshop and the Interview Formula framework — is now a reusable foundation WTW Lanka can carry into future program cycles.
Looking Ahead
WTW Lanka is applying what it learned to strengthen future cohorts. Interactive "special session" workshops, like the email-writing intensive, proved essential for keeping participants engaged in the run-up to final evaluations — a format WTW Lanka plans to build on. The organization is also refining its outreach strategy, planning to launch social media and marketing campaigns earlier and around local academic exam calendars, in order to reach a larger and better-matched cohort of ambitious young women in future initiatives.
