And yesterday, the government partnered with GIGA, a global initiative by UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union to connect every school to the internet. Last year, GOB partnered with Digi and were able to bring almost 200 schools online. And now, they're targeting schools in Cayo, with the goal to put internet in every school. The Area Rep and Minister of E-Governance told us more yesterday.
Michel Chebat, Minister of Logistics & E-Governance
"The idea behind it to bring internet access to the remaining schools across the country. As you all know, the Ministry of Education and the government had engaged with Digicell to bring internet to I think it was about 190 schools so far and so this is going to be the second phase of it so all those schools that do not yet have internet access will be having access through this GIGA program."
"It's been absolutely incredible because what they've done is that they've expanded the access points so before it was perhaps just the principal's office or the computer lab, but now throughout the schools, anywhere you are, any point, the students can have access to the internet, which means that it frees up even the teaching process so it's been incredible."
"You know the pandemic really forced us to reinvent the wheel so to speak and we all had to really go and learning was online and that whole process had to take place to facilitate and so I think what has happened now is because of what the students had to go through during the pandemic, that kind of prepared them for the kind of hybrid teaching that is happening in many of the schools where they have online classes as well as person to person."
