Five spe­cial needs schools have been se­lect­ed to re­ceive state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy labs through the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s In­no­va­tion Lab pro­gramme. The labs have been de­signed to in­crease ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the dig­i­tal world for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, en­hanc­ing ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and open­ing new av­enues for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties to par­tic­i­pate in so­ci­ety on an equal ba­sis.

Ini­tial­ly con­ceived as a one-year ini­tia­tive to com­mem­o­rate the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s ten-year an­niver­sary in 2022, the foun­da­tion launched a sec­ond call for ap­pli­ca­tions ear­li­er this year to en­sure that tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment re­mains at the fore­front for spe­cial needs com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Af­ter a rig­or­ous se­lec­tion process, the fol­low­ing five schools have been se­lect­ed to re­ceive Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion In­no­va­tion Labs:

• La­dy Ho­choy School Gas­par­il­lo

• Princess Eliz­a­beth Pri­ma­ry School

• Palmeras Learn­ing Cen­tre

• The School for the Blind

• Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (NCPD)

The prin­ci­pal of Palmeras Learn­ing Cen­tre, Ear­lene Phillips, was thank­ful for the ini­tia­tive.

“We ex­press our deep­est grat­i­tude to the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion for se­lect­ing our school as one of the re­cip­i­ents of the 2024 In­no­va­tion Labs. Ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy will al­low us to in­tro­duce in­no­v­a­tive learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences tai­lored to our stu­dents’ unique needs, fos­ter­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and pro­vid­ing a more in­clu­sive learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment. Your sup­port demon­strates a pro­found com­mit­ment to the fu­ture of ed­u­ca­tion and will make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence in the lives of our stu­dents and their fam­i­lies.”

Through projects such as this one, the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to cham­pi­on the cause of in­clu­siv­i­ty and pro­vide the tools nec­es­sary for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties to thrive in a rapid­ly evolv­ing dig­i­tal world.