Re­birth House, a res­i­den­tial re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre for in­di­vid­u­als re­cov­er­ing from sub­stance use dis­or­der, now has a ful­ly equipped com­put­er lab to sup­port the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment of its res­i­dents.

Re­birth House was among ten non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions se­lect­ed in De­cem­ber 2024 to re­ceive sup­port un­der the EPIC (Ex­tra­or­di­nary Projects Im­pact­ing Com­mu­ni­ties) Grant pro­gramme, led by the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion in part­ner­ship with Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go. The fund­ing en­abled the cen­tre to pur­chase 24 com­put­ers, an over­head pro­jec­tor, a print­er, and fur­ni­ture to es­tab­lish the lab, along with one year of free Dig­i­cel Plus in­ter­net ser­vice.

Ac­cord­ing to Neela Bir­jah, CEO of Re­birth House, the fa­cil­i­ty will pro­vide crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties for res­i­dents to re­build their lives through on­line ac­cess to re­cruit­ment, re­search, ca­reer de­vel­op­ment, and sup­port groups like Al­co­holics Anony­mous.

With a ca­pac­i­ty for 25 in­di­vid­u­als, Re­birth House of­fers a self-ad­mis­sion mod­el for peo­ple seek­ing sup­port and long-term re­cov­ery.

On April 15, Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s head of op­er­a­tions Cindyann Cur­ren­cy and Shell T&T’s so­cial per­for­mance and so­cial in­vest­ment ad­vis­er Rys­sa Brath­waite at­tend­ed an of­fi­cial project walk­through at the Re­hab Cen­tre, lo­cat­ed in Ch­aguara­mas at the De­fence Force Army Re­serve.

Cur­ren­cy praised the Re­birth House ini­tia­tive, say­ing, “Us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to as­sist with so­cial is­sues like sub­stance use dis­or­der is the kind of so­cial in­vest­ment we’re keen to see. Mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy more ac­ces­si­ble and ben­e­fi­cial to vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties is ex­act­ly what makes this EPIC.”

Brath­waite said, “Re­cov­ery takes courage, sup­port and op­por­tu­ni­ty, and at Shell T&T, we are ho­n­oured to walk along­side Re­birth House and the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion on that jour­ney.

“This tech­nol­o­gy lab is more than a room filled with equip­ment; it’s a sym­bol of pos­si­bil­i­ty. We’re proud to sup­port a space where heal­ing be­gins, hope grows, and every step for­ward is worth cel­e­brat­ing.”

The 2024-2025 EPIC pro­gramme award­ed grants to ten com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions across T&T, with a to­tal in­vest­ment of $1.4 mil­lion, set to ben­e­fit ap­prox­i­mate­ly 58,000 peo­ple.