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Joining hands with Qatar Petroleum (QP) as an official sponsor, Reach Out to Asia (Rota) has officially launched the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Indonesia Programme, to improve access to modern technology and quality education. |
Aimed at streamlining quality teaching, learning and administrative processes in schools through the provision of ICT infrastructure and relevant training, the programme is being implemented across 12 schools in Indonesia’s Jogjakarta region, with plans of rolling it out in other schools in the future.
The first assessment and implementation phase of the ICT Indonesia Programme was completed in April and the implementation phase has already started. A programme socialisation activity was held in October 2013, which brought together teachers and administrators from participating schools along with representatives from the Ministry of National Education for an overview of the programme’s mission and objectives.
The programme socialisation was followed by the preparation of school infrastructure.
“We are proud to say that although in its early stage, Rota’s ICT Indonesia Programme has received an overwhelming response from participating schools, teachers and students,” said Essa al-Mannai, Rota executive director.
Al-Mannai praised the efforts of the programme’s partners in Indonesia, namely Titian Foundation along with its associates, INTEL Indonesia and INFEST, which were assigned as service providers for participating schools. “We have full faith in Titian Foundation, our strategic partner in Indonesia. We have confidence in its capacity to carry out the ongoing programme and expand its scope to other schools and regions in the country,” added al-Mannai.
Al-Mannai also thanked QP for continuously supporting Rota’s missions and initiatives and for helping with the successful implementation of the ICT Indonesia Programme. “We have consistently solidified our commitment to the promotion of primary and secondary education in Qatar and are proud to have extended the scope of this commitment to Asian countries through our sponsorship of Rota’s ICT Indonesia Programme,” said Abdulrahman Abdulla al-Obaidly, manager for public relations and communications at QP.
Schools in Indonesia have limited access to information and communication technologies, an obstacle that has impaired the teachers to integrate ICT in their curriculum and classroom activities, and to prepare their students for new-age education.
With the objective of overcoming this, the ICT Indonesia Programme is a pilot initiative that aims to provide a successful model to be eventually scaled up to cover schools across the country.
