RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

It’s known as one of the most im­pov­er­ished crime hotspots in the San Fer­nan­do re­gion, yet when res­i­dents of the Train­line, in Mara­bel­la, heard they were get­ting a new mul­ti-skilled learn­ing cen­tre, they bond­ed to­geth­er in uni­ty to as­sist in the con­struc­tion.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Dig­i­cel, Abra­ham Smith, com­mend­ed the res­i­dents for their com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

“Whether it was mix­ing ce­ment, plas­ter­ing walls, lay­ing tiles, you all worked to­geth­er to see this project com­plete,” Smith said.

He said the cen­tre was the first of its kind in the area and was equipped with in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty, desk­top com­put­ers and print­ers. It is ex­pect­ed to be used as a home­work cen­tre for the dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren of the Train­line who are of­ten un­able to com­plete school projects and home­work be­cause they could not af­ford dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

Smith not­ed Dig­i­cel’s in­volve­ment dates two years ago when the Min­istry of Sport made a call for pri­vate en­ter­pris­es to adopt a com­mu­ni­ty.

“ We con­tribute out of love and we are hap­py to be de­liv­er­ing this in the com­mu­ni­ty. Our epic grant pro­gram has do­nat­ed over $ 4 mil­lion in projects in­vest­ed over two years which has ben­e­fit­ed over 60,000 peo­ple across the coun­try,” he said.

He added that both the young and old can ben­e­fit from the cen­tre.

“This was an am­bi­tious goal. We have a dig­i­tal agen­da, dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship. We be­lieve in build­ing a dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ty with free in­ter­net labs, desk­top com­put­ers, print­ers and surge pro­tec­tors. This cen­tre will trans­form lives. Every­one has ac­cess to home­work as­sis­tance and here you can ac­quire dig­i­tal skills which can be mas­tered at any age,” Smith said.

He called on com­mu­ni­ty el­ders to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties at the cen­tre.

Mean­while, Deputy May­or Feri Ho­sein said she was al­so grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ties for the old and young to learn from one an­oth­er.

“A coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant re­source is its hu­man re­sources. This ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to fo­cus on the wel­fare of peo­ple, im­prov­ing their qual­i­ty of life, pro­mot­ing a sense of self-worth, be­long­ing and com­mu­ni­ty spir­it,” he said.

She added: “From a pub­lic health per­spec­tive we have an age­ing pop­u­la­tion so now more than ever there is a need for in­ter­gen­er­a­tional re­la­tion­ships. Old peo­ple have a wealth of knowl­edge and youths strug­gle to es­tab­lish iden­ti­ty. They have en­er­gy, cre­ativ­i­ty and a quick un­der­stand­ing of tech­nol­o­gy. The old and young can work to­geth­er to cre­ate a vi­brant com­mu­ni­ty.”

Al­so at­tend­ing the event was Bev­er­ly Reid Samuel, deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and Gail Grant of the First La­dy of the Bayshore Open Bible Church.