Digicel PNG, through its humanitarian arm the Digicel PNG Foundation, has been recognised as a significant partner in the space of education.
Today the Digicel PNG Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Education, to increase quality educational outcome for students, through a free-to-air Digicel PNG Foundation, Education television channel.
The Foundation’s education program has had significant impact in provinces and districts across the country, for over 13 years.
Digicel Foundation Chief Executive Officer Serena Sasingian and Digicel PNG Senior Vice President and Chief of Sales Lorna McPherson signed the MoU with Minister for Education Jimmy Uguro and Secretary for Education Dr Uke Kombra.
Minister Uguro said, “On this occasion it marks the next step forward of this country and on behalf of our Prime Minister and the Marape Government I would like to say thank you to Digicel Foundation management and Digicel foundation team for endless support to this country and to our communities, districts and provinces in terms of putting up your tower, ambulances, communication networks and anything that you provide to the community and in schools. On behalf of the government I thank the foundation for their support.”
Secretary Kombra reiterated that COVID-19 has greatly challenged the sector in ensuring children continue to learn, and are not left behind.
“When we were hit by Covid-19 in 2020, we were not able to cope with the suspension of classes and challenges that were brought upon us. One of the challenges we had was how we can provide a learning platform for our students across the education system. We went into different modes of using our E-learning content through radio as well to ensure that students were still learning. Today marks a very important occasion for us because we were able to provide for our teachers, our students, and our parents a dedicated 24 hour TV channel which we will agree upon with Digicel Foundation,” said Dr Kombra.
Since the launch of Digicel PNG Foundation in October 2008, a total of PGK139.8 million have been invested into more than 500 projects in rural and remote areas of Papua New Guinea through the roll out, of Education and Health Projects. This is based on the ethos of the Chairman for Digicel Group and Patron for Digicel Foundation, Denis O’Brien who has said, where Digicel as a business grows, so too must the communities it operates in.
To date the Digicel PNG, through the work of the Foundation, has built 431 education infrastructures consisting of classrooms, early learning centers and libraries, and are concurrently running programs in early learning; literacy enrichment and educational development; school curriculum and schools resource distribution.