The Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren Fund (UNCF) has part­nered with the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty (LWC) to pro­vide tablets (elec­tron­ic de­vices) fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) to some 600 Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren so they can pur­sue their ed­u­ca­tion while in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

They would be used as part of a blend­ed on­line/face-to-face in­struc­tion pro­gramme, cer­ti­fied by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC), called “Equal Place”.

Speak­ing at the dis­tri­b­u­tion Dr Aloys Ka­muragiye, UNICEF rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the East­ern Caribbean Area said: “This event is just a mile­stone on a longer jour­ney.”

When the Venezue­lan mi­grants be­gan com­ing in­to the coun­try fol­low­ing the po­lit­i­cal tur­moil in their home coun­try, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion stat­ed that the chil­dren could not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the pub­lic school sys­tem; hin­der­ing their abil­i­ty to re­ceive a for­mal ed­u­ca­tion.

“Since then we have been think­ing about a bet­ter so­lu­tion - a kind of ed­u­ca­tion that is cer­ti­fied. That’s how we came up with this ini­tia­tive,” he said.

Dr Ka­muragiye ex­plained that they would use the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil’s (CXC) pro­gramme to cer­ti­fy the chil­dren.

“I think this is a great achieve­ment. We have been dis­cussing with the high-lev­el au­thor­i­ties in CXC...so there is an agree­ment they would be cer­ti­fy­ing their learn­ing.”

Dr Ka­muragiye as­sured UNICEF would con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for mi­grant chil­dren to re­ceive main­stream ed­u­ca­tion in the pub­lic school sys­tem.

UN­HCR pro­tec­tion of­fi­cer Ruben Bar­ba­do ex­pressed a sim­i­lar need for mi­grant chil­dren to re­ceive a for­mal ed­u­ca­tion.

“Those who come to Trinidad and To­ba­go come for mul­ti­ple rea­sons. Some be­cause of pros­e­cu­tion and so on and Trinidad and To­ba­go is not an iso­lat­ed coun­try in the world. Some peo­ple reach here be­cause it’s the eas­i­est and the clos­est place to go and it’s our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help them to en­joy their rights.”

Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty Di­rec­tor Rhon­da Main­got al­so said: “it is so im­por­tant that our chil­dren get in­to the school.”

There just over 16,000 Venezue­lans who reg­is­tered to live and work legal­ly in this coun­try for a year, fol­low­ing gov­ern­ment’s reg­is­tra­tion amnesty ex­er­cise.

Many of the mi­grants came with their chil­dren, in­clud­ing ba­bies, in search of a bet­ter life.

How­ev­er, some chil­dren have been re­ceiv­ing an ed­u­ca­tion at fa­cil­i­ties like the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port, which has been host­ing free class­es for mi­grant chil­dren.