The steel­band move­ment con­tin­ues to cre­ate last­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple. In part­ner­ship with the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, eight new Tech­nol­o­gy-in-Ed­u­ca­tion (TIE) Cen­tres have been launched, ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal ac­cess and skills de­vel­op­ment with­in these vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty spaces.

The new­ly launched cen­tres are lo­cat­ed at Tor­na­does Steel Or­ches­tra, Siparia Del­tones Steel Or­ches­tra, Mer­ry Tones Steel Or­ches­tra, Pan­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra, Bird­song Steel Band, Acad­e­my and So­cial En­ter­pris­es, Gold­en Hands Steel­pan Con­ser­va­to­ry, St Mar­garet’s An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Trinidad, and at the Rox­bor­ough Po­lice Youth Club in To­ba­go. Each cen­tre is equipped with com­put­ers, in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and dig­i­tal tools to sup­port ed­u­ca­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, re­search, and tech­no­log­i­cal lit­er­a­cy.

“These or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions are al­ready men­tor­ing, shap­ing, and guid­ing young peo­ple, and they are now equipped to do even more,” said De­sha Clif­ford, chair of the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s Board, at the joint launch event held at the Bird­song Acad­e­my in St Au­gus­tine on Feb­ru­ary 6. “By plac­ing our Tech­nol­o­gy-in-Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tres with­in pa­n­yards, we are strength­en­ing spaces that young peo­ple al­ready feel con­nect­ed to, while ex­pand­ing their ac­cess to dig­i­tal op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Kwe­si Moore, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer at Pan Trin­ba­go, added, “Through this pro­gramme, 26 pa­n­yards are now part of a grow­ing na­tion­al net­work of dig­i­tal learn­ing hubs. More im­por­tant­ly, hun­dreds of young mu­si­cians have ben­e­fit­ed—young peo­ple who are now bet­ter equipped to nav­i­gate both the mu­si­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal land­scapes of the mod­ern world.” He ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion for its con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to em­pow­er­ing pa­n­yards.

To date, the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion has in­vest­ed over $2 mil­lion in tech­nol­o­gy cen­tres across pa­n­yards na­tion­wide. The ini­tia­tive con­tin­ues to bridge the dig­i­tal di­vide, ex­pand­ing ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy in com­mu­ni­ties that need it most, while re­in­forc­ing the vi­tal men­tor­ship role steel­bands play in youth de­vel­op­ment.