JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Rampanalgas community grateful for donated devices

by

Carisa Lee
1535 days ago
20210423

Five months ago when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty of Ram­panal­gas for our No Child Left Be­hind se­ries, when it was re­vealed that many chil­dren in the vil­lage did not have de­vices to at­tend their on­line class­es, as fam­i­lies were un­able to pur­chase de­vices.

In many in­stances, one de­vice was be­ing shared among sev­er­al chil­dren who were in dif­fer­ent class­es in a house­hold.

“Every day it was like a bur­den, a stress,” Ram­panal­gas res­i­dent Nicole Roberts said.

Roberts said this re­sult­ed in stu­dents like her grand­son not log­ging in­to vir­tu­al class­es and in­stead par­tic­i­pat­ing in oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties to pass the time.

“All the chil­dren and them change up be­cause they use to be on the road, every minute you see all the chil­dren on top the hill, come down the hill and they head by the beach,” Roberts said.

The sit­u­a­tion changed com­plete­ly in the com­mu­ni­ty af­ter their sto­ry aired and good Samar­i­tans across the coun­try do­nat­ed tablets and lap­tops to their fam­i­lies.

“Since he get he de­vice, every day he is present in class…I just thank God al­lyuh (sic) come our way,” Roberts said.

When we last vis­it­ed the vil­lage, Crys­tal Maraj was wor­ried about her son’s ed­u­ca­tion and afraid that he would be left be­hind.

She told ex­plained he found it hard to fo­cus as she showed us the bro­ken tablet screen he had to use. But since he got the new de­vice his at­ti­tude to­wards school­work and his per­for­mance have both changed.

“He home with me work­ing and he got a su­per grade this pre­vi­ous term, good enough for me it was very sat­is­fy­ing to me and the teach­ers,” Maraj said.

Min­utes be­fore Maraj spoke with Guardian Me­dia, she said the prin­ci­pal of the Ram­panal­gas RC Pri­ma­ry School called her and con­grat­u­lat­ed her on her son’s per­for­mance in term two.

“When you’ll put that out there we were of­fered a lot of help… since that we’ve been go­ing good,” Maraj said.

Prin­ci­pal Naina Ali said the do­na­tions led to a turn­around in the mind­set of fam­i­lies in the com­mu­ni­ty and she has seen vast im­prove­ment.

“I now have a work­ing vil­lage, my chil­dren are try­ing their best,” Ali said.

De­spite the de­vices, con­nec­tiv­i­ty still re­mains a prob­lem.

Ali said while over 90 per cent of her stu­dents at­tend class­es dai­ly they some­times drop off class­es due to the poor con­nec­tion.

“The chil­dren have the tablet but at times they have to go by the neigh­bour to get in­ter­net from them and then on a whole the in­ter­net some­times just don’t work on cer­tain days. But they are still there try­ing, every time the in­ter­net drop they will come back on,” Ali ex­plained.

Back in No­vem­ber when Guardian Me­dia reached out to Dig­i­cel’s pub­lic re­la­tions head Col­in Greaves about poor con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the area he ad­mit­ted that there was lim­it­ed in­fra­struc­ture in Ram­panal­gas.

He said it was no quick fix but the com­pa­ny’s tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tion teams were try­ing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion.

But ac­cord­ing to three of the coun­try’s ma­jor lo­cal in­ter­net ser­vice providers at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on So­cial Ser­vices on Hy­brid Learn­ing on Wednes­day, con­nec­tiv­i­ty will al­ways be an is­sue in these com­mu­ni­ties.

But for those who are will­ing to stand the con­se­quences and pur­chase in­ter­net there will soon be $100 pack­ages, vat in­clu­sive, to low-in­come house­holds.

TSTT, Dig­i­cel and FLOW told a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee that they are work­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to draft a means test, based on a sur­vey of those who do not have the in­ter­net at home.

The Ram­panal­gas RC Pri­ma­ry School has a to­tal of 58 stu­dents and Ali said with the ef­fort she’s seen re­cent­ly she is cer­tain that the chil­dren from the area will be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete with those in oth­er dis­tricts.

Par­ents and the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty are full of grat­i­tude for those who took the time to help change the lives of those in the lit­tle North-east­ern vil­lage.

“It made we, as less for­tu­nate par­ents, we felt much bet­ter, we felt good, we felt want­ed as a com­mu­ni­ty,” Maraj said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored