Two-week pilot program supports university students with disabilities to gain corporate experience Sri Lanka’s premier connectivity provider, Dialog Axiata PLC and apparel manufacturing and technology conglomerate, MAS Holdings, recently introduced the Dialog MAS Enabler Program to support university students with disabilities gain experience in corporate settings. Ninestudents, including undergraduates and new graduates from the universities of Colombo, Peradeniya, and Sri Jayewardenepura, with visual, hearing and physical impairments were hosted at the two companies for a two-week period, and exposed to different parts of each business, ranging from operations, product creation, manufacturing to corporate offices and customer service centres.
Recognising the diverse abilities of potential new entrants to thenation’s workforce, Dialog and MAS established the Dialog MAS Enabler Program as a pilot study to not only support the selected students in their professional development, but also to understand how better organisations could prepare and equip themselves to enable employees with disabilities to experience inclusive workplaces.
The program kicked off with an opening session held at the Dialog auditorium, where the students were welcomed and received a briefing about the programme. The students spent the next two weeks attending immersion sessions in different business units of the two companies, including receiving exposure at customer facing service centres at Dialog, understanding the product creation and manufacturing processes at MAS, and central corporate offices at both companies.
The students were also able to engage with the MAS Adaptive Centre of Excellence, which is home to its recently launched adaptive apparel solution, Lable by MAS.
The two-week program was concluded with an event attended by MAS chairman and co-founder, Deshamanya Mahesh Amalean and Dialog Group Chief Executive Officer Supun Weerasinghe, where the students were able to share their learnings with the audience.
Supun Weerasinghe, Group Chief Executive of Dialog Axiata PLC said, “Dialog continues to be committed to building an organisation that nurtures diverse talent, equitably and inclusively, and the Dialog MAS Enabler Programme is an important step in furthering disability inclusion in Sri Lankan workplaces.”