The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion has an­nounced its Tech­nol­o­gy In Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Cen­tre Pro­gramme in part­ner­ship with Pan Trin­ba­go on World Steel­pan Day which was cel­e­brat­ed on Au­gust 11. This year the Foun­da­tion’s TIE Pro­gramme will fol­low a ‘pa­n­yard mod­el’, open­ing eight tech­nol­o­gy cen­tres at­tached to pa­n­yards around the coun­try through an in­vest­ment of TT$540,000.

The first four re­cip­i­ents of these TIE Cen­tres were nom­i­nat­ed by Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore and the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive, and they are Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra in To­ba­go, Curepe Scherzan­do Steel Or­ches­tra; NGC Cou­va Joy­lan­ders Steel Or­ches­tra and Harlem Syn­co­pa­tors Steel Or­ches­tra.

In ad­di­tion, the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion is­sued a call to all reg­is­tered steel­band or­gan­i­sa­tions to ap­ply for one of four avail­able grants to trans­form their pa­n­yards with a Tech­nol­o­gy in Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Cen­tre. To ap­ply, the or­gan­i­sa­tion must show ev­i­dence that they have a des­ig­nat­ed space large enough to host a com­put­er lab and that they al­ready of­fer af­ter-school youth or com­mu­ni­ty train­ing ini­tia­tives. Most im­por­tant­ly, it should be clear that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has a sus­tain­able plan for grow­ing its out­reach and that the pro­posed TIE Cen­tre will have an im­pact on a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple.

The idea for the pa­n­yard mod­el was born out of the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go Pan­thers Steel Or­ches­tra, which opened a TIE Cen­tre last year. The To­ba­go Pan­thers Pan The­atre TIE Cen­tre of­fers a home­work cen­tre and a num­ber of af­ter-school.