YOUTHS of Meten-Meer-Zorg and surrounding communities are the latest to benefit from Basic Information and Communications Technology Training, through a programme conducted under the Office of the Prime Minister’s Industry and Innovation Unit and the Department of Public Affairs.
Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs, Kwame McCoy, delivered the feature address to students at the Nirvana Humanitarian Society, Friday afternoon, as the five-day training concluded.
He told the youths that they are being prepared for a great and exciting future.

“The skills that we have been teaching you, are making available to you are skills that are a part of the future of Guyana, and what exactly is the future of Guyana? Not only do we have plans, programmes and initiatives that will see us moving in particular directions and certain directions over the next year and the next year and the next year, but it is who will be moving with those plans, with the direction with the programmes, with the initiatives, it’s you,” Minister McCoy said.
The programme is being conducted countrywide and hundreds of youths from various regions have already benefitted. Minister McCoy said the programme is preparing the youths for the technological transformation of Guyana.
He noted that it was always the vision of the PPP/C Government to educate Guyanese in basic ICT, and One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) programme, introduced in the party’s previous term in office, was part of this plan.

The students were given basic training in web development, programming and coding and robotics, aimed at building the capacity of youths.
The programme catered for youths ages 10 to 20. Several of them spoke with the Department for Public Information (DPI).
“The programme was very informative, I learnt about programming, we also learnt the basics of using a computer for example the input and output devices etc. We also learnt how to send emails, how to use the Internet properly,” said Tajwattie Lall.
Matthew Sookoo, said he enjoyed the programme and will continue to practice what he has learnt.
“It was very helpful to me and I learnt many things about the computer that I didn’t know before and it was very fun, because we were at home all the time and didn’t had nowhere to go, and it was fun to come.”

Stephanie Sankar previously studied Information Technology, but she too learnt some new things.
“I’m grateful for this opportunity, I have learnt so many things I did not know like other parts of programming, like I didn’t know how to create games using programming, so that is one of the things I learnt. I did word processing and other things but I got the opportunity to be open to more opportunities like the games,” she told DPI. “We enjoyed the programme learning stuff about Excel and stuff, it was great. I didn’t know about those things, now I learn them,” said 11-year-old Jasoda Anwar.