The do­na­tion of 10,000 de­vices to school chil­dren by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) will not on­ly al­low those chil­dren ac­cess to on­line learn­ing but will change their lives. That’s ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who was speak­ing at the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween her min­istry and TATT in Barataria yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the agree­ment, TSTT and Dig­i­cel Trinidad and To­ba­go will pro­cure and pro­vide 10,000 ICT-en­abled tablets, 10,000 SIM cards and three months in­ter­net pack­ages for 10,000 stu­dents in need.

TATT will fund the project from its Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Fund at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of  $15, 144, 975 TT.

The de­vices will be dis­trib­uted by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to needy stu­dents.

Al­so present at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny was Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Lisa Mor­ris-Julien and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Has­sell Bac­chus.

TATT was rep­re­sent­ed by chair­man Gilbert Pe­ter­son and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Cyn­thia Red­dock Downes.

Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said TATT com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing needy stu­dents even be­fore a call was put out to cor­po­rate T&T to do­nate de­vices to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65,000 stu­dents who did not have ac­cess to on­line learn­ing.

She said home-based learn­ing has pre­sent­ed many prob­lems for both ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents.

“Every par­ent, my­self and Min­is­ter Mor­ris-Julien in­clud­ed, every teacher, every child can tell you it has been a chal­lenge, get­ting used to the sys­tem, get­ting used to learn­ing where you used to re­lax, that has been some­thing all of us had to learn on the trot.”

She said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic shook the foun­da­tion of ed­u­ca­tion by caus­ing face-to-face class­es to be sus­pend­ed. 

“At the min­istry, it has al­so been a chal­lenge be­cause we are charged with the man­date to en­sure that learn­ing takes place so when the fun­da­men­tal sit­u­a­tion that chil­dren can­not go to school is pre­sent­ed to a min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion and it is echoed across the world, it is some­thing that shakes the very foun­da­tion of what you do.”

Say­ing the switch to on­line has been a steep learn­ing curve, Gads­by-Dol­ly com­mend­ed TATT for their do­na­tion. She said the de­vices will change the lives of the chil­dren who re­ceive them.

“I will tell you that there are many fam­i­lies where there is one de­vice be­ing shared by mul­ti­ple chil­dren. So this is not just 10,000, this is 10,000 mul­ti­plied by all the lives that will be touched by these de­vices en­ter­ing a home.”