Restore Belize Receives Chromebooks to Support Students in Scholarship Program

More than 60 high school students are benefiting from a donation of computers given to Restore Belize by the Office of the Special Envoy for the Development of Families and Children. Yesterday, the Special Envoy’s office delivered sixteen Chromebooks, to support Restore Belize’s evening study hall program and the I Am Belize scholarship program. The Spouses of CARICOM Leaders Action Network (SCLAN) also assisted with the donation.  Executive Director of Restore Belize, Christine Smith, says that the laptops will be put to use as early as next week, for a summer program supporting first-form students. 

Christine Smith, Executive Director, Restore Belize: “Since we got these computers over the summer we’re going to be doing a session with our new scholarship recipients starting next week. Where we’re going to be doing an introduction to information technology session with the students who will be going into first form. We’re doing this because we have seen where students who are just going into high school lack some of the skills in terms of use of Word, doing emails, setting up emails, answering to emails, but more importantly, ensuring that they attach the documents that they need to their emails.  So those are some of the topics that we’re gonna be covering  in the session with the students. It’s gonna be for two weeks. It’s gonna be in the afternoon starting next week Monday.  We’re doing it in the afternoons because the students are presently doing summer school at their respective high schools and we’re also going to be touching on the use of AI as they move forward. The study hall is a program from Monday to Thursday where students come in after school. They come from three to five. They utilize our resources in terms of the computers to do research, to print, complete assignments. If they have online tests that they need to do for school, they use our devices to do that. They come and do homework. During study hall, we also have those who are  doing tutoring who will come during that period and the tutor comes here to work with them. We know that especially since a lot of the schools do projects, we have students coming in to do their science project, math project, whatever project they have, and we have the resources, materials for them to use.”

Smith says that the donation is timely since Restore Belize is seeking to expand the I Am Belize Scholarship program./