Social media is an emerging trend in Sri Lanka. According to the statistics released by Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRC), the number of mobile broadband connections has doubled each year, registering an average growth of nearly 96.5% during the past six years. Fixed internet connections have also registered a praiseworthy growth of 68%. While e-commerce is still a budding industry in Sri Lanka, social media is taking leaps and strides among the local internet users. Facebook and YouTube are the second and fourth traffic receivers in the country and there are 3-3.5 million Facebook account users in Sri Lanka today, which amounts to nearly 16% of the local population and the majority of Facebook users (2.8 million) are concentrated on the Western Province of the country. The proposed social media campaign in this project will be highly effective for promoting public awareness. The activity on a national level short film and the art and poster competition will increase public awareness island-wide and it will be promoted through media using ?TV Derana?. In addition, articles written by youth and selected art and posters will be published in newspapers and magazines.

The project is mainly focused on a youth community driven management mechanism to protect and conserve the Kolonnawa marsh and its ecosystem. The youth involvement in this project is more than 75%. The grantee (Emotional Intelligence Life Skills Training Team) will do the planning and coordination activities while most of the implementation activities for the community or to the wetland will be done by the selected youth e.g. social media campaign, shramadana (voluntary giving of labour) activities, short film competition, PRA surveys, etc. The age group of the selected youth will be between 16 - 30 years who are living around the Kolonnawa Divisional Secretariat area. Most of the youth are students of the Kolonnawa Youth Center which belongs to National Youth Services Council of Sri Lanka.