A Technical Secondary School in the Eastern edge of the coastal Town of Vanimo has become a center of hope and progression.
With the establishment of a resource center by the European Union Support to Rural Entrepreneurship and Trade Papua New Guinea (EU STREIT PNG), Don Bosco Technical Secondary School can now have access to a digital hub that provides enriched educational opportunities as well as digital tools and services for students, farmers and agripreneurs alike .
The declining state and insufficiency in the region’s existing facilities over the years has seen the rural communities on the Eastern side of Vanimo having limited access to the digital world, preventing them from exploring and utilizing its potential for business and educational opportunities.
Don Bosco Vanimo Technical Secondary, one of the leading school that used to offer education and access to ICT in that area was faced with persistent challenges with its aging ICT equipment hindering its ability to provide quality ICT and Computer education.
Don Bosco Vanimo Technical Secondary School’s Principal Ms. Majuna Chamilou says the school used to run short courses for the students and community but all their machines had broken-down. She says the situation was dire, with only functioning but old computers up and running. “It came to a point where fifty students were sharing just ten computers”, the Principal says.
The School now has a turning point when being recognized by the EU-STREIT PNG programme to become a hub of ICT and digital education, serving both the student and empowering the community in terms of its farming business.
Through the first phase of the initiative implemented by the International Communications Union (ICU), the school recieved fifteen new Computers, a printer and the necessary support to establish a fully equipped resource center. There is also a plan for the school to recieve another additional fifteen Computers, video conferencing equipment and one more printer from the Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The second phase of Support will meet the growing demand of the local community members and business-oriented farmers. The Resource Center is connected to a power mini-grid system established by the United Nations Development Programme under the EU-STREIT PNG to ensure that it is uninterrupted and fully functional.
To further strengthen the Resource Center’s capabilities, ITU also organized Training of Trainers (ToT) capability-building for the teachers and Moderators of Resource Center including Don Bosco. These are trainings such as digital skills, e-commerce, Government to Citizen Services, team building, Sustainable Businesses Planning and Financial Literacy.”We are so thankful to EU-STREIT PNG for including our teachers in these ToT trainings. It was exactly what we needed,” Says the School Principal when expressing her gratitude.
The establishment of the Resource Center has fundamentally reshaped the quality of education at the school, improving the issue of student -to computer ratio that has been a major problem over the past years.