Select Your Country
Kellits, Clarendon – Thursday, September 1, 2016: Over 100 students will return to school with new tools to accelerate their learning as the Kellits Primary School in Northern Clarendon received a timely gift from one of their past students, Nikuma Fuller, yesterday.
The school received an Literacy Enrichment Cart outfitted with literacy and numeracy materials to aid students between Grades 1 and 3 in reading, writing and mathematics.
The school’s principal, Mrs. Rhynee McKay Bennett shared her excitement upon hearing the news, saying, “We have been trying to improve our performance in literacy and numeracy over the years because our results continue to fluctuate. This is a timely donation. We are extremely happy to know that Nikuma still has us in her thoughts, having passed through this institution herself.”
Fuller, after placing 3rd in a Digicel staff competition, was asked to choose a school to receive an Enrichment Cart going into the new school year.
“Quote from Nikuma”
Grade 3 teacher, Kerry-Kea Jackson also noted her eagerness to begin classes, saying, “We usually can’t afford to buy some of these items so we try to make them out of cartridge paper sometimes. However, they are not very durable and the ones we had bought are now tattered. I can’t wait to begin classes so I can make lessons even more engaging and exciting for the children.”
The materials, valued at over $700,000, were provided by Digicel Foundation through their Literacy Enrichment Programme, co-funded through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“We are excited to see how the school’s results will improve once they begin using these materials. The teachers have already been trained through the USAID and just needed resources to put those skills to use. We are grateful to be able to partner with them to provide the best opportunities for our children,” shared Evadne Cowell, Training and Development Manager at Digicel Foundation.
The Literacy Enrichment Programme is a 3-year partnership between Digicel Foundation, USAID and the Ministry of Education to use ICT as an intervention tool to improve the literacy skills of children performing below the required aptitude levels prior to the National Grade Four Literacy Examination.
Since 2013, over 40,000 children have benefitted from the project, with over 250 teachers trained.
About Digicel Foundation
The Digicel Foundation is a committed partner in the quest to build our nation. As the largest local private sector foundation in Jamaica their main focus is to mobilize and distribute resources to develop Jamaican communities. Tthe Foundation strives to ensure that as Digicel grows, Jamaican communities grow. Since its inception in 2004 the Foundation has invested over J$3 billion to support improvements in Education, Special Needs and Social Enterprise. To date we have impacted over 600,000 Jamaicans with over 600 projects islandwide.
