U.S. Embassy, SOUTHCOM donate equipment to Waterloo Secondary

The U.S. Em­bassy in Port of Spain, in part­ner­ship with Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand, has do­nat­ed com­put­ers and ed­u­ca­tion­al equip­ment to Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School as part of the Hu­man­i­tar­i­an As­sis­tance Pro­gram.

The han­dover took place on De­cem­ber 11 and in­clud­ed 10 desk­top com­put­ers, 10 desks, 10 chairs, 10 UPS units, a print­er, 10 white­boards, a re­frig­er­a­tor, a mi­crowave, sta­tionery, and oth­er sup­plies. The items are val­ued at US$25,000. The Hu­man­i­tar­i­an As­sis­tance Pro­gram sup­ports learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments and ad­vances dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy for stu­dents.

U.S. Em­bassy Se­nior De­fense Of­fi­cial U.S. Navy Cap­tain Gedion Tek­le­gior­gis pre­sent­ed the equip­ment to Prin­ci­pal Usha Dookhran-Cheer­an­jie dur­ing the school’s an­nu­al Christ­mas con­cert.

Prin­ci­pal Dookhran-Cheer­an­jie said the school wel­comed the sup­port from the U.S. Em­bassy. She not­ed that the do­na­tion came dur­ing the school’s 25th an­niver­sary year. She said the school viewed the con­tri­bu­tion as added en­cour­age­ment as it ob­served the mile­stone.

Chargé d’Af­faires Dr. Jenifer Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz said the do­na­tion was the sec­ond made by US­SOUTH­COM through the Em­bassy with­in one week. She re­ferred to a re­cent do­na­tion to Rox­bor­ough An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School on De­cem­ber 5.

Dr. Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz said the Unit­ed States re­mained a part­ner to Trinidad and To­ba­go and that the equip­ment pro­vid­ed di­rect sup­port to stu­dents and staff at Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School. She said she was pleased the items would be put to use im­me­di­ate­ly.

The Em­bassy said the ini­tia­tive aligns with on­go­ing ef­forts to as­sist ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions across the coun­try through tar­get­ed sup­port pro­grams.