Months in­to COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in T&T, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly plead­ed with cit­i­zens to spon­sor lap­tops and tablets to 65,000 stu­dents who could not af­ford de­vices for on­line school, which was the new nor­mal in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

Now five months lat­er, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian de­scribes the re­sponse by cit­i­zens as phe­nom­e­nal, say­ing that the num­ber is sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­creas­ing.

At the be­gin­ning of 2021, The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­vealed that 30,000 stu­dents were still with­out de­vices.

Yes­ter­day, the St Do­minic’s RC Pri­ma­ry School got a boost for its needy pupils as the Pe­nal Sports Foun­da­tion pre­sent­ed 50 tablets to out­go­ing prin­ci­pal Sher­ma Sobers at the Pe­nal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said every week, some­one ap­proach­es the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, of­fer­ing to spon­sor de­vices for stu­dents.

She said that in her com­mu­ni­ty, there were over 100 dis­tri­b­u­tions from in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens. De­spite her be­lief that cit­i­zens would not want to do­nate, she said the best of T&T is show­ing dur­ing an ad­verse time.

“The cor­po­rate cit­i­zens of Trinidad & To­ba­go, their re­sponse has been phe­nom­e­nal. The Min­is­ter and my­self, we are ex­treme­ly im­pressed. Every week, prac­ti­cal­ly every day at one point, they step for­ward to give gen­er­ous­ly to var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties. But I am al­so im­pressed with in­di­vid­u­als. For ex­am­ple, in my com­mu­ni­ty, a grand­moth­er, 88- years-old, took part of her pen­sion mon­ey to do­nate one tablet,” Mor­ris-Ju­lian said.

In the 2020/21 bud­get, the gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ed $50 mil­lion to pur­chase lap­tops for needy stu­dents.

Mor­ris-Ju­lian said those will ar­rive soon.

She said the schools would car­ry out the means test to de­ter­mine which stu­dents re­quire de­vices.

Pe­nal Sports Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Neil Gue­vara said many of his mem­bers were past pupils of St Do­minic’s RC and saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty to help.

Gue­vara said an­oth­er mem­ber came up with the idea and the Foun­da­tion be­gan con­tact­ing mem­bers and past pupils lo­cal­ly and in the Unit­ed States and Eng­land.

The school has a pop­u­la­tion of 242 pupils and re­quired 135 de­vices. Al­though the Foun­da­tion de­liv­ered 50 yes­ter­day, 20 are on the way, and they will work to get the rest for the pupils.

From yes­ter­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion, pupils will re­ceive Ama­zon Fire 7 with Alexa, We Cool and Sam­sung Tabs.