IGT (for­mer­ly GTech) teamed up with the Im­mortelle Chil­dren's Cen­tre in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, to pro­vide the cen­tre with iPads and oth­er IT equip­ment to en­sure high qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and the best learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the cen­tre's stu­dents, a re­lease said.

The state-of-the-art equip­ment was pre­sent­ed by Ann-Dawn Young Sang, IGT's re­gion­al vice pres­i­dent for the Caribbean. The Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Pro­gramme is cel­e­brat­ing its tenth an­niver­sary in T&T this year.

"I am ex­treme­ly proud of the growth in the num­ber of Af­ter School Ad­van­tage cen­tres in T&T over the past ten years," said Young Sang. "We opened ten cen­tres in 2005, and, since then we have opened many more cen­tres at non-prof­it and non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions, and re-equipped com­put­er cen­tres at some of our orig­i­nal part­ner or­gan­i­sa­tions. It un­der­scores IGT's long-term com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ties we serve through our Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Pro­gramme."

"The chil­dren's smiles and their ea­ger­ness to learn have been the dri­ving force be­hind the Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Pro­gramme and it push­es us to open more cen­tres to equip these young learn­ers with the req­ui­site skills need­ed to un­leash their po­ten­tial for the fu­ture," she added.

Found­ed in 1986 as a play­group for chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, the Im­mortelle Chil­dren's Cen­tre is to­day one of the most renowned schools cater­ing for young peo­ple with var­i­ous dis­abil­i­ties in T&T.

Since in­cep­tion, the cen­tre has worked to pro­vide in­di­vid­u­als with de­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties an op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain an ed­u­ca­tion and vo­ca­tion­al skills train­ing, while al­so fos­ter­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a more ro­bust net­work with­in the dis­abil­i­ty sec­tor.

"Cre­at­ing an in­clu­sive so­ci­ety is one of our great­est wish­es," says Jacqui Leo­taud, head of the Im­mortelle Chil­dren's Cen­tre. "We tire­less­ly work to in­crease aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing of the needs and the val­ue of in­di­vid­u­als with de­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties in T&T, and that is why we con­stant­ly look for sup­port, both na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly."

Over the years, the cen­tre has col­lab­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tions, prov­ing to be a dy­nam­ic, for­ward-think­ing, char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion, pro­vid­ing an es­sen­tial and des­per­ate­ly need­ed ser­vice to in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies in Trinidad.

The fruit of one such suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion was a re­search project, which ex­plored the use of iPads among the chil­dren and young adults at the cen­tre. The study showed that the ma­jor­i­ty of the stu­dents en­joyed this new learn­ing method and their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the class­room in­creased tremen­dous­ly.

"iPads have emerged as a very ef­fec­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al tool for in­di­vid­u­als with de­vel­op­men­tal de­lays, thanks to the many apps that have been de­vel­oped to aid com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be­hav­iour­al is­sues and de­vel­op fine mo­tor skills," Leo­taud com­ment­ed.

"We are deeply grate­ful for IGT's gen­er­ous do­na­tion and are very ex­cit­ed to im­ple­ment this in­no­v­a­tive teach­ing method in our school. We've al­ways want­ed our stu­dents to be ex­posed to the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy avail­able, in the hope of be­ing part of a na­tion­al move­ment that im­proves the lives of all per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. IGT's con­tri­bu­tion has cer­tain­ly helped ful­fill that dream."