By CMC From St Lucia Online

(CMC) – Students from five Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries will benefit from a new initiative aimed at promoting digital education in the Caribbean.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) said it has signed an agreement with the Spanish-based ProFuturo Foundation, which has one of the largest digital education programmes in the world.

The OAS said the agreement will benefit over 23,000 students in The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana and Jamaica.

It said 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 that the platform will also reach 1,132 teachers.

SEDI executive secretary, Kim Osborne, said 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,” she said.

The head of CITEL, Oscar León, stressed that the initiative is carried out within the framework of fulfilling the goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the ICT Alliance 2030 of the Americas.

The latter is 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,” León said.

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.

“Sixty-five 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, adding that it makes access to digital education critical.

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 OAS said the ministries of education of the Caribbean countries will be in charge of the implementation of the program in their respective states.