Through its Af­ter School Ad­van­tage (ASA) pro­gramme, IGT has re­cent­ly do­nat­ed ad­di­tion­al iPads with ac­com­pa­ny­ing ac­ces­sories and a lap­top to the Autis­tic So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Like many oth­er non-gov­ern­ment or­ga­ni­za­tions who work with spe­cial needs chil­dren, the Autis­tic So­ci­ety has ex­pe­ri­enced var­i­ous chal­lenges through­out the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic, in­clud­ing ex­ten­sive re­stric­tions and so­cial dis­tanc­ing poli­cies which have lim­it­ed dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties. The ad­di­tion of these new de­vices will great­ly as­sist in nav­i­gat­ing the cur­rent con­straints, as well as en­hance the vir­tu­al learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences for the chil­dren of the or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Since 2012, IGT has part­nered with the Autis­tic So­ci­ety through its ASA pro­gramme, in con­tribut­ing tech­no­log­i­cal equip­ment to­wards mak­ing the lives of chil­dren with Autism Spec­trum Dis­or­ders (ASD) much eas­i­er. Over the years, the do­na­tions of iPads, have sig­nif­i­cant­ly as­sist­ed in im­prov­ing the chil­dren’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion abil­i­ties, func­tion­ing as ef­fec­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al tools for the chil­dren.  The de­vices are al­so used to teach so­cial skills and im­prove so­cial in­ter­ac­tion with peers and adults us­ing spe­cif­ic apps and as a form of aug­men­ta­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly for those who have lim­it­ed speech ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The Autis­tic So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go was es­tab­lished on 31st May 1990 and is a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion that is first and fore­most a par­ent sup­port group for fam­i­lies of chil­dren di­ag­nosed with ASD. The Autis­tic So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mis­sion is “Work­ing to­geth­er with fam­i­lies to help all in­di­vid­u­als with ASD achieve their fullest po­ten­tial through ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, and ad­vo­ca­cy for af­ford­able and ap­pro­pri­ate qual­i­ty ser­vices.”

The ASA pro­gramme is IGT’s sig­na­ture cor­po­rate phil­an­thropic pro­gramme pro­vid­ing com­put­er labs for chil­dren ages 5-18 to use for home­work as­sign­ments dur­ing the crit­i­cal af­ter-school hours. The pro­gramme strives to close the “Dig­i­tal Di­vide” for at-risk chil­dren who are left be­hind be­cause they do not have the means to ac­cess com­put­ers at home in to­day’s in­creas­ing­ly dig­i­tal so­ci­ety.