Tashieka Mair, Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
THE STUDENTS of the Vaughn's Field Primary and Infant School in St. James, now stand to benefit from increased access to computer skills training following a donation of equipment from the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) on Tuesday.
The school received five computers, a printer, a scanner and educational software as part of the 'JNBS Foundation Computers in Schools' programme.
The programme, which is the result of JNBS' partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), started in 2004 and since then, 56 schools, the majority being rural schools, have benefited from the project.
"The society (JNBS) bought, as a first phase, some 250 brand new computers and we decided that we would want to make the donation of these computers
particularly to rural schools, because we felt that these rural schools had less of an opportunity to appeal to corporate Jamaica for help," Mr. Elroy Flowers, Senior Manager at JNBS explained.
TARGETS RURAL SCHOOLS
He said that this does not mean that the fund is limited to rural schools, but that they are the main target of this fund. The schools that receive the computers are nominated by teachers, students, past students and the public. These schools are then assessed to see if they have the facilities to properly accommodate computers.
If the school meets the required standards then a recommendation is made to the committee and the decision is made as to how many
computers the school is to receive. Schools can receive as many as 10 computers in the first phase of the project.
MAINTAINING COMPUTERS
He encouraged the children and parents to open an account with JNBS and link it to an affinity account, opened in the school's name, as every time their account accumulates interest JNBS will contribute 10 per cent of the interest towards the affinity account and this contribution goes towards maintaining the computers. The students' accounts would not be affected, as they will still receive their interest in full.
Mr. Ian Singh, principal of Vaughn's Field Primary and Infant School expressed his gratitude to JNBS and to those who saw it fitting to nominate his school for the useful and well-needed equipment.
Osheen Erskine, head girl of Vaughn's Field Primary, thanked JNBS for this initiative and said "We are very grateful to JNBS for these computers and we know that they will enhance our learning and give us a greater level of information. We will endeavour to make good use of them."
