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OAS and ProFuturo Foundation to Bring Digital Education to 23,000 Students in the Caribbean

  October 16, 2018

OAS and ProFuturo Foundation to Bring Digital Education to 23,000 Students in the Caribbean
Photo: OAS

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the ProFuturo Foundation signed an agreement today to promote digital education in a hundred schools in five member countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM): The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana and Jamaica.

The initiative will be carried out through the Educational Portal of the Americas of the Executive Secretariat for Integral Development (SEDI) and the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL) of the OAS, and its platform will reach 1,132 teachers and 23,026 students.

The Executive Secretary of SEDI, Kim Osborne, indicated that the agreement is made to fulfill the objectives of the Inter-American Education Agenda. "This particular agreement with that we signed with ProFuturo on the digital classrooms, speaks to the pillar one on the Inter American Education Agenda which is focused on quality and inclusive education," said Osborne.

Also, the head of CITEL, Oscar León, stressed that the initiative is carried out within the framework of fulfilling the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the ICT Alliance 2030 of the Americas, "an initiative of the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, which has the support of CITEL and supports the Member States to integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into their national policies."

For her part, the Director General of ProFuturo, Sofía Fernández de Mesa, said that knowledge of the digital world is key to the future development of the new generations. "65 percent of the students in primary today are going to be working in jobs that do not exist for the time being,” said Fernández de Mesa, which makes access to digital education critical, she said.

The initiative is carried out within the framework of the agreement to promote digital education in Latin America and the Caribbean signed by the OAS and ProFuturo in February 2017. The ministries of Education of the Caribbean countries will be in charge of the implementation of the program in their respective states.

ProFuturo is an education program launched in 2016 by the Telefónica Foundation and the "La Caixa" Banking Foundation.

Reference: FNE-95164