Tasvare Primary School in Merelava, Banks, and Martin Primary School in Hiu, both in TORBA Province, now have access to high speed internet, through technical and financial assistance provided by the Office of the Telecommunications, Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulator (TRBR), as part of the Computer Laboratory and Internet Community Centre (CLICC) Program.
It took a week for Jean Paul Malessy (TRBR Officer), Peter Meltetake (Telsat officer) and Mendra Televan (PCS officer) to assist in setting up the two sites to enable the teachers, students and the two local communities to connect to the world.
According to Mr Malessy, more than hundred (100) students from Tasvare primary school in Merelava and Martin primary school in Hiu can now have access to reliable Internet for the first time.
‘It is a safe and secure internet access model, that TRBR provides for these two primary schools, and that model could be replicated in other schools in the country’, Mr Malessy explained during the launching ceremony.
TRBR’s Universal Access and Service Coordinator, Hanson Waki stated that the realisation of this project was purposely to improve coverage and give opportunity to students and their teachers to have access to internet for their academic research programs, and these schools can now access the Vanuatu Educational Management Information System (VEMIS), and be able to feed information into the VEMIS database as required by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET). Such benefit will also have a positive impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of decision making in relation to the school development.
She continued to explain that under Vanuatu’s Universal Access Policy (UAP), two projects were designed under the principle that schools can be hubs for community Internet access. These were the Computer Laboratory and Internet Community Centre (CLICC) and the Tablet for Schools (TFS) project. ‘The two computer labs in TORBA province were part of the CLICC project’ Mrs Waki confirmed. Nineteen (19) schools throughout Vanuatu have already benefited from the CLICC project, since it was launched in 2015.
Pictures:
1. Capturing the first ever call from Imo app, Hiu, Torres Islands
2. Teachers Training, Tasvare and Lequel Primary School, Merelava, Banks Islands