Dr Vinya Ariyaratne

Vinya Ariyaratne is the President of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement which is Sri Lanka’s largest non-governmental grassroots development organization. Dr. Ariyaratne also serves as the Director General of the newly established Sarvodaya Institute of Higher Learning (SIHL) and as a board member of Sarvodaya Development Finance (SDF), the economic empowerment arm of the Sarvodaya Movement. Dr. Ariyaratne is a physician by profession and a Board-Certified Specialist in Community Medicine. He is a past President of the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka (CCPSL). Dr. Ariyaratne obtained his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) Degree from the De La Salle University in the Philippines in 1989 and his Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree from the Johns Hopkins University U.S.A. in 1990. He also holds the Degrees of Master of Science M.Sc. (1996) and Doctor of Medicine (MD) in Community Medicine (2003) from the Post-Graduate Institute of Medicine of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, U.K. (1992) and a Chevening Fellow at the Nuffield Institute of the Faculty of Medicine and Health of the University of Leeds, U.K. where he obtained with Distinction the Postgraduate Certificate in Health Management, Planning and Policy (2006).