Gtech Cor­po­ra­tion's Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Pro­gramme is again team­ing up with one of the coun­try's lead­ing train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion NGOs to en­hance its ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er qual­i­ty in­struc­tion mak­ing use of state-of-the-art IT tools.

On March 25, Gtech Cor­po­ra­tion's vice-pres­i­dent Glob­al Gov­ern­ment Re­la­tions, Michael Mel­lo, was on hand to present ten Learn Pad Qua­tro Tablets and a suite of spe­cial learn­ing soft­ware for chil­dren to the Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion, a re­lease said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mr Mel­lo, Gtech's re­la­tion­ship with the foun­da­tion has proven the point that col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts be­tween the busi­ness sec­tor and or­gan­i­sa­tions con­cerned with core de­vel­op­ment is­sues such as train­ing and de­vel­op­ment can make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of chil­dren.

Two years ago, Gtech as­sist­ed the foun­da­tion through the do­na­tion of nine new desk­top com­put­ers, a lap­top and ed­u­ca­tion­al soft­ware – all specif­i­cal­ly net­worked to pro­vide op­ti­mal learn­ing un­der ac­tive teacher su­per­vi­sion.

This lat­est con­tri­bu­tion serves to up­grade ex­ist­ing tech­nol­o­gy while mak­ing avail­able new soft­ware that was iden­ti­fied by the team of spe­cial­ists at the foun­da­tion.

The Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion, which was es­tab­lished in 1993, of­fers a va­ri­ety of pro­grammes to help im­prove life chances for the res­i­dents of tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties, such as St Ann's, Cas­cade, Bel­mont, East Dry Riv­er and en­vi­rons.

Among the many pro­grammes of­fered at the foun­da­tion is the Ear­ly Child­hood Care & Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, which is an af­ford­able high-qual­i­ty ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion cen­tre for chil­dren aged three to five.

An­oth­er pro­gramme is the Home­work Cen­tre, which of­fers a qui­et, con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment for study. Re­me­di­al teach­ers are as­signed to work with chil­dren need­ing ad­di­tion­al tu­tor­ing.

"The foun­da­tion's vi­sion­ary man­date more than 20 years ago is now wide­ly recog­nised as the pre­ferred ap­proach to ear­ly child­hood care and in­struc­tion," said Mel­lo. "While the new tablets pro­vide a faster, more ef­fi­cient plat­form than those of the past, the ac­com­pa­ny­ing soft­ware is 'where the ac­tion re­al­ly starts.'"

The spe­cial learn­ing soft­ware fo­cus­es on in­ter­ac­tive learn­ing in the ar­eas of lan­guage and math­e­mat­ics for young chil­dren.

"Thanks to Gtech's com­put­ers, chil­dren at the Ear­ly Child­hood Care & Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (pre-school) have learnt how to use mouse and key­board which as­sist in de­vel­op­ing eye/hand co­or­di­na­tion while the in­stalled games re­in­force colour, num­ber and let­ter recog­ni­tion," said Avril Alexan­der, act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er at the Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion.

Pri­ma­ry school age chil­dren have al­so ben­e­fit­ted from the com­put­ers and the in­stalled soft­ware, which al­lows them to cre­ate doc­u­ments, con­duct re­search and re­in­force read­ing com­pre­hen­sion through a se­ries of ex­er­cis­es re­quir­ing the use of the com­put­er.

Gtech's do­na­tion max­imis­es not on­ly the chil­dren's learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties but al­so their po­ten­tial and over­all de­vel­op­ment. "The use of com­put­ers in­stills a sense of ac­com­plish­ment in the chil­dren and builds con­fi­dence. By help­ing each oth­er with var­i­ous tasks, they al­so learn the im­por­tance of co­op­er­a­tion and team­work, skills that will serve them well in the fu­ture," added Alexan­der.

When the Gtech/Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion was launched in 2013, the move had been de­scribed by Roger Bo­lai, Coun­try Man­ag­er Gtech Cor­po­ra­tion T&T, as a "vi­tal first step in the right di­rec­tion in help­ing our chil­dren par­tic­i­pate and com­pete in a glob­al econ­o­my."

Bo­lai added that re­cent world events have proven the val­ue of an in­ter-con­nect­ed­ness based on the abil­i­ty of coun­tries such as T&T, that have pro­vid­ed some of the world's great thinkers, writ­ers and sports­men and women, to main­tain its stand­ing in the glob­al mar­ket­place.

"The chil­dren who pass through the Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion's hands are among the lead­ers of the fu­ture who will be tasked with ne­go­ti­at­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances," he said. "The fruit of the im­por­tant work of the foun­da­tion will even­tu­al­ly be ex­pressed in terms of the qual­i­ty of the coun­try's per­for­mance on the world stage."

Gtech's Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Pro­gramme start­ed in T&T in 2005. In the first year, the pro­gramme part­nered with ten Cen­tre's through­out Trinidad & To­ba­go. Since then, Gtech has con­tin­ued to work with sev­er­al of these cen­tres to up­grade their fa­cil­i­ties with ad­di­tion­al new com­put­ers, equip­ment and soft­ware, and has opened more new cen­tres. The com­pa­ny al­so suc­cess­ful­ly works with more than 245 Af­ter School Ad­van­tage Cen­tres glob­al­ly.