`OLPF – links children, families and the community through connecting learning, using computers to support ICT and other functional skills learning to take place’
The One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project, established by the Guyana Government, aims to meet the challenge of job-preparedness for future and existing workers in the new economy. Officials said it will ensure that today’s teenagers and youths get the resources (laptops, internet connection, maintenance and support) and skills (training) that will enable them to graduate into the modern economy as prepared knowledge-based workers, who are capable of enhancing their own growth.
For the first three years of the project, the OLPF scheme will deliver 90,000 laptops to targeted groups and families in urban, coastal and hinterland communities, who will reflect a diverse background.
The primary focus is on youth, single parents and disadvantaged groups.
Officials have noted that computers and the Internet have shifted the paradigm of the modern, global economy.
These technologies create opportunities for employment and industry development, resulting over time in the creation of knowledge-based workers who play more of a key role enhancing economic activities and civic engagement.
Training in ICT skills is essential for the development of the new knowledge-based worker.
While education initiatives are underway to provide the continuing of these skills, additional efforts are required to reach the target numbers of ensuring large spread internet and ICT awareness of usage.
Without new opportunities and resources, many young adults and disadvantaged groups cannot be engaged in using ICT for development and as such are being excluded from the new and growing job market.
Guyana can also position itself as an ICT hub, leveraging its investment in telecommunications and internet infrastructure, the officials said.
Guyana’s ICT4D (Information Communication Telecommunication for Development) strategy of April 2006, outlined by Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud, focused on a plan to facilitate and ensure the dramatic increase in the use of ICT to support social and economic wealth at all levels: individual, organisational and national.
The ICT strategy is geared to enhance Guyana’s human resources capacity, using information technology to accelerate economic and social development. This strategy is designed to play a critical role in achieving the country’s development goals, while facilitating and promoting prosperity and well being.
The ICT strategy is grounded in the vision of all Guyanese having the opportunity to fully participate in the information and knowledge society in order to accelerate national development and prosperity.
The Government of Guyana recognises that in order to accelerate the reduction of the number of people with (out) ICT skills requires a long term plan.
People of all walks of life will enhance their skills, bridge the digital divide between those who have ICT skills and those who do not, while also providing new functional skills to help all.
Those in the programme can, for example, learn how to write a letter, using Word. Or if they are thinking of starting a business, they will learn how to use a spreadsheet to budget.
A farmer can also learn how costs and yield can be enhanced through the OLPF project.
The OLPF project will activate volunteer programmes to provide capacity building on ICT for development.
It will also identify free online programmes and information which the population can access for self-learning and self-development.
A budgetary allocation of $1.8B is provided for the OLPF which will be implemented over the next two years targeting mostly less fortunate families.
President Bharrat Jagdeo has said several factors are being taken into consideration to determine less fortunate sections of society, including an income test and groups such as single parents.
At the launch it was announced that a public tender process will be applied for the purchase of the laptops and President Jagdeo said the engineer’s estimate based on the features, suggests that the cost for a single device is likely to be US$300.
He, however, made it clear that such an aggregate is not final since the tender process will make the determination.
Outside of the public tender President Jagdeo said, the Guyana Government has approached China for the sourcing of Lenovo computers and estimates that if such an endeavour is pursued, it will cost US$8M.