One of the main problems encountered by those who are engaged in research in rural sociology  at undergraduate and post graduate levels in universities is the absence of a set of data on rural communities ,in other countries such data are available but in our country, until recent, time we did not have such a data available have community level. Especially information resources, I mean community resources including human and physical resources in the villages , production  consumption patterns ,profiles of gender ,age ,education and health of men ,women and children of the rural communities, I feel this as a vacuum  to be filed .The itshed  project has been able to fill that vacuum by marking such a set of data on rural communities available in one website. Postgraduate students  and  researchers will learn how they can save time, effort and money in gathering  data with the availability of community data as described  and there will be more research  interest on rural  communities with this type of initiatives ,As a senior lecture engaged  in research in rural sociology I have been personally benefited from such a data set ,The itshed  project is worthy of praised on its path.

Professor Mayura samarakoon