By Prince Acquah
Elmina (C/R), April 19, GNA – EduSpots, a UK and Ghanaian registered NGO working to create educational opportunities for underserved communities, has launched a digitalisation initiative to distribute 1,000 tablets and laptops in six months across 15 regions in Ghana.
It has also launched a new application, EduSpot App, a tool for community educators (catalysts) to connect with each other and to access training and teaching programmes and resources.
The campaign seeks to further the organisation’s agenda to train, equip and connect more than 300 community educators (catalysts) to foster educational opportunities for more than 10,000 learners through a network of 50 community-led education spaces (libraries).
For a start, they distributed 100 tablets and laptops with accessories to selected catalysts for use at their community-based libraries to mark the launch of the initiative.
The launch follows the 10,000-kilometre Accra to London ‘Drive for Digitalisation’ campaign that Wanderlust Ghana led in support of EduSpots in July 2023 through which they raised $20,000 to support the procurement of digital devices.
It was launched on the theme: “Digital Skills for a More Equitable Future: Harnessing the Power of Digital Tools to address Educational Inequity in Underserved Communities”.
Ms Catherine Davison, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EDUSPOT, noted that it was impossible to build an ideal sustainable future in today’s world without having digital learning skills.
She said young people in Ghana needed effective digital training with accompanying resources to survive the 21st Century.
“We are all so excited to see the impact of these digital tools within the communities and hope to use this trial effectively to implement a longer-term digitisation process across our network,” she said.
Ms Davison appealed to the organisations and individuals interested in supporting the digital training campaign to reach out.
Mr Aaron Akwaboah, Director for Strategy and Innovation at the Ministry of Education, said access to digital tools and training should be treated as a necessity considering the demands of the world today.
He observed that Ghana’s young population made it fertile for a smooth easy to transition into digitalisation and called for a deliberate and collective effort towards it.
He said while Government needed to provide vision and policies for pushing Ghana into the digital era, the responsibility was also on community leaders, teachers and all other stakeholders to ensure the vision was realised.
Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann, Dean of the School of Engineering Sciences, University of Ghana, indicated that it was not enough to give access to education and training, but it was also critical to providing a thriving environment.
She also called on Ghanaians to actively partake in the creation of emerging technologies to ensure they were relevant to them and not just be consumers.
“We need to participate in creating the data that is used for these systems (Artificial Intelligence) because if we want that technology to be relevant to us, it must understand us and know what our reality is.
“If we allow things to continue as they are, we will be left behind or we will get tools and technologies that are not relevant to us,” she added.
For his part, Mr Richard Anim of Wanderlust Ghana, mentioned that the emergence of the fourth Industrial Revolution meant that students across the globe must be empowered with the skills to make them fit for purpose for the future of work.
“The work of EduSpots across Ghana helps to push this agenda and Wanderlust is pleased to support this initiative,” he noted.
GNA