The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion has an­nounced its ac­com­plish­ments for the past fi­nan­cial year. The Foun­da­tion re­port­ed that they suc­cess­ful­ly in­vest­ed TT$3.4 mil­lion in 33 projects that im­pact­ed over 21,000 per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease from Dig­i­cel

The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion host­ed its 7th An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, vir­tu­al­ly via Mi­crosoft Teams on Thurs­day 30th Sep­tem­ber. The agen­da for this year’s AGM de­tailed an im­pres­sive overview of its ac­com­plish­ments for the past fi­nan­cial year April 2020- March 2021. Not to be de­terred by all the aris­ing chal­lenges re­sult­ing from the on­go­ing COVID 19 pan­dem­ic, the Foun­da­tion re­port­ed that they suc­cess­ful­ly in­vest­ed TT$3.4 mil­lion in 33 projects that im­pact­ed over 21,000 per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion team pre­sent­ed the year in re­view un­der the theme “Be­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary in ex­tra-or­di­nary times”. The year’s theme right­ful­ly en­cap­su­lat­ed no­table projects such as the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s Con­nect­ing You ini­tia­tive that pro­vid­ed 1,915 de­vices to 63 schools in Trinidad and To­ba­go and launch of the Mas­ters of Prep app, which is vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty game to build dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness and man­age emer­gen­cies. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Foun­da­tion in­vest­ed and as­sist­ed in 23 Com­mu­ni­ty project through its EPIC (Ex­tra­or­di­nary Projects Im­pact­ing Com­mu­ni­ties) grant fund­ing. Amidst all of these projects, there came the suc­cess­ful sec­ond vir­tu­al ex­e­cu­tion of Girls Pow­er Tech, which set out to in­spire young girls to con­sid­er and pur­sue ca­reers in ICT.

Keep­ing with the theme, of Be­ing Ex­tra­or­di­nary, the AGM in­clud­ed con­tri­bu­tions from DJ Joe Brien and TV host, Sham­la Ma­haraj.  Both of whom shared their per­son­al sto­ries of how they con­tin­ue to over­come dis­crim­i­na­tion and lob­by for in­clu­sion in so­ci­ety.  De­liv­er­ing the Fea­ture Ad­dress was Car­lyle Gab­bid on who is the Café Man­ag­er of Deaf Can! Cof­fee, which is a so­cial en­ter­prise based in Ja­maica that trains young peo­ple with hear­ing im­pair­ment to be­come pro­fes­sion­al baris­tas.   Car­lyle’s mes­sage was yet an­oth­er re­count of ris­ing above in­sur­mount­able odds to build a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in spite of his dis­abil­i­ty and em­pow­er­ing oth­ers to do the same.  

Un­der the lead­er­ship of CEO, Pen­ny Gomez, the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to grow and deep­en its re­la­tion­ships with com­mu­ni­ties and build strate­gic re­la­tion­ships that im­prove op­por­tu­ni­ties for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. CEO Pen­ny Gomez shared; “COVID-19 af­fect­ed all of our plans.” She added, “My team is small but a group of re­silient car­ing young women. To­geth­er with our part­ners, we quick­ly as­sessed what the crit­i­cal needs were and re­spond­ed with sup­port that kept us all go­ing dur­ing the dark time…this AGM is im­por­tant so that we can cel­e­brate all the wins in spite of the ob­sta­cles we all en­dure.”

Just about 50 in­di­vid­u­als at­tend­ed the vir­tu­al host­ing of the team. They in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from spe­cial needs schools, Spe­cial Olympics TT, Ryu Dan Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion, CIS­CO, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Court Sham­rock, Mt St George Po­lice Youth Club, NALIS, La­dy Ho­choy Schools, IDB, etc.

All of the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion part­ners played a piv­otal role in the suc­cess of the past year. Re­ceiv­ing awards for out­stand­ing part­ner­ships this year was Hy­dra, IDB-Lab, Cod­ed Arts and Dig­i­cel- Head of Pub­lic Re­la­tions, Mr. Col­in Greaves.