AN­NA-LISA PAUL

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS) has set up an In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) Lab un­der the Adult Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme (AEP).

Owned and op­er­at­ed by gov­ern­ment, the ini­tia­tive was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion.

The lab is lo­cat­ed at the AEP’s Life­long Learn­ing Cen­tre, Omardeen Build­ing, Cipero Street, San Fer­nan­do.

Through the gen­er­ous do­na­tion by Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, ten desk­top com­put­ers have been made avail­able to the 55 per­sons reg­is­tered for ICT Stud­ies in the 2020 Edi­tion of the AEP.

The lab is part of gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy to re­vi­tal­ize the na­tion­al econ­o­my and in­crease re­silience and sus­tain­abil­i­ty among vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to MS­DFS Min­is­ter, Don­na Cox: “The ex­er­cise is sym­bol­ic of the greater good that can come out of al­liances be­tween the State and the pri­vate sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly with­in this pe­ri­od of un­prece­dent­ed glob­al de­vel­op­ments.”

She said with­in re­cent months, the world has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dra­mat­ic shifts in re­la­tion­ships with tech­nol­o­gy and be­cause, “Ed­u­ca­tion as you know, is a fun­da­men­tal tool in the fight against pover­ty.”

“Through this ini­tia­tive, the Min­istry has al­so gone one step fur­ther in re­duc­ing the dig­i­tal di­vide and cre­at­ing av­enues for de­cent work, qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and en­hanced stan­dards of liv­ing,” Min­is­ter Cox said.

Cox thanked Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion for part­ner­ing with the min­istry to en­sure that no per­son is left be­hind, as they seek to em­pow­er hu­man cap­i­tal and build a re­silient frame­work for a brighter and more pros­per­ous fu­ture.

MS­DFS’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Sheila Seecha­ran said the ini­tia­tive was in sup­port of the min­istry’s prepa­ra­tions to mi­grate the AEP’s cours­es to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine Open Cam­pus’ on­line plat­forms.

She said this de­ci­sion will al­low for mod­u­lar stud­ies to be pur­sued in var­i­ous sub­ject of­fer­ings, re­sult­ing in cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the UWIOC.

Se­nior Gov­ern­ment Re­la­tions and Af­fairs Ex­ec­u­tive at the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, Ali­cia Hospedales, said they were hap­py to part­ner with the Min­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing this pe­ri­od when hav­ing ac­cess to on­line learn­ing was so im­por­tant.

The over­all cost for the ten com­put­ers was es­ti­mat­ed at around US $5,000.

Na­tion­al AEP Co­or­di­na­tor, Rachel Guz­man De­Vlugt, said fol­low­ing the re­stric­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with COVID-19 and the new ap­proach to on­line class­es, the com­put­ers could not have come a bet­ter time.

She as­sured they would al­so as­sist the AEP to con­tribute to the ful­fil­ment of the UN’s Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal #4, to “En­sure in­clu­sive and eq­ui­table qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and pro­mote life­long learn­ing for all”.

The AEP was first in­tro­duced in the 1940s, and has played a vi­tal role in the em­pow­er­ment and trans­for­ma­tion of the lives of T&T’s most vul­ner­a­ble, al­low­ing for cer­ti­fi­able im­prove­ments in their aca­d­e­m­ic, as well as tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al knowl­edge, be­hav­iours and com­pe­ten­cies.