Akash Sama­roo

Seek­ing to un­der­score its com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Chi­nese Am­bas­sador gift­ed the San Juan North Sec­ondary School with 22 lap­top com­put­ers.

An act of gen­eros­i­ty that great­ly pleased the school’s prin­ci­pal Dabrielle Nurse who said this will con­tribute to the re­cent suc­cess the in­sti­tu­tion has been en­joy­ing in a few sub­ject ar­eas.

“We have a his­to­ry of suc­cess in ar­eas such as IT and just this year our stu­dents at CSEC lev­el would have scored over 80 per cent pass­es in IT,” she said.

Nurse added, “Stu­dents who are pur­su­ing Of­fice Ad­min­is­tra­tion and EDPM (Elec­tron­ic Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion and Man­age­ment) will al­so ben­e­fit from those de­vices, and we would got­ten 100 per cent pass­es in Of­fice Ad­min­is­tra­tion and 74 per cent pass­es in EDPM.”

The Chi­nese Em­bassy is no stranger to the San Juan school.

There is a ded­i­cat­ed Chi­na-Trinidad and To­ba­go Friend­ship Class­room. A smart board and schol­ar­ships have al­so been of­fered to the school in the past.

Nurse an­nounced that they would be delv­ing deep­er in­to its re­la­tion­ship with Chi­na through lan­guage and the arts.

“As a for­eign lan­guage ed­u­ca­tor my­self, I un­der­stand the val­ue of ap­pre­ci­at­ing cul­tures and en­gag­ing, in­ter­act­ing and de­vel­op­ing a spir­it of ap­pre­ci­a­tion. We know that Chi­na is well known for its cul­ture, arts, mu­sic and dance and we look for­ward to learn­ing. One of the ini­tia­tives we have been dis­cussing is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­gag­ing our stu­dents in the learn­ing of Man­darin,” she re­vealed re­ceiv­ing a nod of ap­pre­ci­a­tion from Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu.

Am­bas­sador Qiu in turn urged the stu­dents to see this ges­ture as more than a do­na­tion of equip­ment.

“In­vest­ing in the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers and in­no­va­tors is cru­cial for dri­ving a na­tion’s con­tin­ued progress and pros­per­i­ty. I firm­ly be­lieve this ini­tia­tive will un­doubt­ed­ly ben­e­fit these stu­dents to emerge as fu­ture lead­ers. The new Chi­na-Trinidad and To­ba­go Friend­ship Class­room sym­bol­is­es the warm, cor­dial and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship our two na­tions have nur­tured through­out the years,” he said.

The am­bas­sador em­pha­sised that ed­u­ca­tion re­mains a key pil­lar in bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries.

“In re­cent years the col­lab­o­ra­tion in ed­u­ca­tion be­tween our two na­tions has led to im­pres­sive ac­com­plish­ments. Chi­na has been of­fer­ing schol­ar­ships to stu­dents of Trinidad and To­ba­go al­low­ing them to study at some of the finest uni­ver­si­ties and re­search in­sti­tu­tions in Chi­na. These schol­ar­ships have cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for many tal­ent­ed young in­di­vid­u­als,” the am­bas­sador said.