Sri Lanka has made an amazing mark internationally with Sri Lankan animator, filmmaker, educator, and social entrepreneur Poornima Meegammana being named one of Forbes Magazine’s prestigious 30 Under 30 for social impact. As the Director of Youth Development at Shilpa Sayura Foundation, she leads the Nextgen Girls in Technology programme.
Bringing true meaning to ‘I can do it all,’ Poornima has delved well beyond her education, with a BA in animation and motion graphics, while currently reading for a Master’s in design innovation. Having also made several empathy-driven short films about social issues with topics ranging from child soldiers, cyber harassment, gender equality, and the environment, Poornima has continued her social development work which focuses on increasing women’s participation in emerging technology careers with the Nextgen programme.
In light of her most recent achievement, which is but one of numerous others, Brunch had a chat with Poornima about the path that she has chosen for herself as a career woman in technology, arts, and social work, and who has become a trailblazer many other young Lankan women look to for inspiration as someone carving her own path on the road less taken.
Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia for social impact is an incredible achievement – what does it mean for you to be celebrated for your contributions on an international level?
I would say this was the only award that everyone around me understood. Everything else – given the niche that I am in, it was like, ‘Ah an award, congratulations,’ but when it was Forbes 30 Under 30 everyone knew what it meant.
Honestly, I did not think I would get this. When I saw the email I couldn’t believe it – I was speechless. I have won other awards, of course, but this was really the next level. I am someone who has kept up with this list, because a lot of people I admired were on it and I always thought it would be cool to be on this list one day, but obviously I never thought it would happen.
Honestly, the best thing about this is its impact on my work – it is great exposure for the work I have been doing for the past three years now and it is bringing a lot of attention to this specific issue of women in technology which we are talking about. I also have to say there is a whole team behind this – it is a lot of collective effort and it is bringing a lot of attention to this programme, which is great.
You are the Director of Youth Development at Shilpa Sayura Foundation, where you lead this Nextgen Girls in Technology programme. Tell us a little bit about the work you do under this banner?
We did a number of programmes with the Shilpa Sayura Foundation, like the one titled ‘Respect Girls on Internet’ which focused on cyber harassment, and another called ‘App Smart’ which was mobile app development for young people.
Through those initiatives, what we came to realise was that there was a general lack of women participating in any of the technology programmes that we did. I mean, ‘App Smart’ had just one girl in the whole programme.
So we started doing research on this, and generally, in the world there’s less than 20% of women who take on tech jobs. In the biggest tech companies in the world and globally, there is a gender gap in technology. In Sri Lanka, there is a schoolgirl population of about 52%, out of which only 8% actually study ICT as a subject.
Sri Lanka is a technology hub and technology is one of our biggest exports at the moment, and there are so many opportunities in the sector.
This was the background for the Nextgen Girls in Technology initiative. We wanted to build a skills-oriented quality technology education for girls’ development, especially in local languages. The programme is introducing a techno-extracurricular programme in schools and training university girls in on-demand skills like IoT (Internet of Things), machine learning, cybersecurity, and design to bridge the skills mismatch and increase their employment opportunities.
You have had the opportunity to grow up with technology, and now work in these technology and innovation spaces. What are your thoughts on the significance of women taking on these roles and getting that exposure for their own empowerment?
I was born into the world of technology – my dad being a software engineer and my mom being an ICT teacher, I have been with technology since day one and that has made a huge difference in my life and in the way that I consume information. I had access to the internet very young and I could see the world and it was different from the way I approached things, so I know the impact it has had in my life.
With the world so intertwined with technology, if we don’t get more women entering these spaces, they are going to be losing out on so many economic opportunities.
Most importantly, a lot of innovation and design happens in the technology space, and if we don’t have diversity in this sector and if we don’t have this diverse participation, we are keeping out a very important perspective in innovation.
If you look at seat belts in cars, for the longest time they were made with only men’s bodies in mind, and it was found that lots of women were getting hurt in accidents because of this oversight.
Therefore, having women in the technology sector and in the innovation space can only benefit society because it is quite literally half of society, so we absolutely have to have women in the rooms where these decisions are being made.
Having worked with women and girls in Sri Lanka, what are your thoughts on their potential, and of the shortcomings in the system that women in Sri Lanka are faced with, which prevents them from reaching their full potential?
One of the main reasons is the backward gender norms that we have ingrained in our culture. There is a lot of conditioning from a very young age – electronics and tech-savvy things are not for girls and we grow up believing this.
There’s also another element in Sri Lanka, where girls, after they hit puberty, are sort of restricted. You are put in a cage and are prevented from doing things, which develops a fear of exploration and taking risks.
They just don’t have as much exposure to technology as boys do, and because girls aren’t encouraged to go out, try things, break stuff and put it back together, it evokes that fear of the unknown and a general lack of exposure overall.
As for the potential, there is immense potential. There are numerous stories of girls as young as 12 or 13 coming into the programme not knowing anything about certain subjects like coding, and these complete novices have gone on to contribute to general real-world problem solving.
There were these three girls, during the pandemic, who had never met each other and had no idea of coding before joining the programme, who went on to discover a system that detected gas leaks in gas cylinders. This is just one small example among many, many others.
You’ve had a colourful career with numerous accolades and countless achievements. What would you say are some of your career highlights that have been landmark moments that kept you going?
I was the winner of the Adobe Creativity Scholarship. This was special because back then there were not that many places to study animation, and I wasn’t someone who could afford to study at AOD, but this scholarship took care of all of that.
I am an Adobe Creativity Scholar and an Epic Games Unreal Fellow, and being awarded this fellowship was a really significant moment for me. I also have to mention the Internet Society (ISOC) – they have been very significant throughout my life and so the ISOC 25 Under 25 Award was a very notable one for me.
Of course, the UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education, Adobe Aspire Award, World Summit Youth Award (WSYA), and Adobe UNICEF Challenge are all landmark moments that I have a great appreciation for.
There’s really nowhere to go but up, so what’s next for you? Any upcoming projects we should keep an eye out for?
Right now I am working on my own animated short film with the fellowship and I am also handling the animation supervision for this very interesting short film that is being made about Sri Lanka and the current situation, both of which will be coming out in the next few months.
As for work, I am looking at expanding our Nextgen Girls in Technology programme further and reaching more people, although I don’t think I can say much about that just yet. Part of it would be that we will be working on a future scientist programme where we will be teaching scientific thinking for young girls and boys, which will be attached to the next step of the Nextgen programme as well.
