15 Nov 2021

As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative for schools and digital education drive, Orange Botswana through the Orange Foundation has donated 50 tablets and laptops to students at Dimajwe primary school in Serowe North constituency on Friday, last week.

The students were trained and given well equipped tablets, laptops, printers,  projectors, power bankers and screen, to do away with chalk and paper materials.

Speaking at the handing over ceremony, Orange Botswana representative, Ms Boitshwarelo Golekanye said Orange donated to Dimajwe Primary School in order to enhance students in rural areas’ social economic status.

Ms Golekanye, who is ICT senior technical officer said the company believed students in rural areas, specially in a settlements like Dimajwe, were capable hence the need to support them so that they could have more input in the community.

Also, she said recipients would use the tablets and laptops to learn how to manage their school business and research on various topics.

‘’Children are now accessing essential educational content using tablets. Beginning with a handful of initiatives in 2014, this project has become a fully-fledged digital education drive, the digital schools programme,” she said. The  kit includes a mini server of educational content connected to 50 tablets.

She said they delivered the programmes in partnership with the basic education ministry.

“We work with them to identify the most appropriate school text books for their pupils, which we then upload into the kit. We train educational representatives in how to use the kits. Our volunteer employees mentor the schools in their region and deliver training and technical support for the teachers and pupils’’, she stated.

The school head, Ms Moitsemang Dikago said access to information would improve their education and school performance since they had been doing badly academically.

Ms Dikago said the benefits of having access to information were huge and therefore the school was grateful to Orange.

She implored Orange Botswana to continue helping primary schools in rural settlements since they were burdened by numerous challenges.

Ms Dikago cited challenges such as alcohol abuse which she said were to blame for rampant murder cases in the area, massive school dropouts and high teenage pregnancy.

She appealed to students and teachers to utilise the gift in a profitable manner so that they coped with transformation to digitalisation.

Orange Foundation have also distributed the same services to many schools in Serowe and the surounding  villages.

Kgosi Kebadiretse Keboneng of Dimajwe village and Parents Teachers Association Chairperson welcomed  the gifts, encouraging the students to work hard to attain academic excellence. ENDS