An Ultra-Modern library and ICT facility has been inaugurated by MTN Ghana Foundation for the New Juaben Senior High School in Koforidua (NJUASCO) last Wednesday.
The facility which cost about GH¢602,150 has a 200-seater conventional library, 20-seater ICT centre, a teachers’ common area and full internet services.
It is purposed to benefit more than 2,000 students and teachers of the school who would want to develop their reading and research habit.
The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, disclosed that the foundation had been instrumental in supporting national development through their investment in education, investing about GH¢33million in 144 projects out of which 82 were educational projects.
“We accepted to embark on the project because we understand the importance of libraries and ICT in the academic development of students.”
He said contrary to the conventional approach where libraries were developed by just stocking them with books, shelves and a sitting area, the foundation decided to add the ICT facility to enable the students have the opportunities of a modern connected world where they can use information technology to fill an information gap and help them to open their world view through research.
He further revealed that a fibre has been deployed to the school adding that Huawei, their partner, has decided to pay for the monthly recurrent charged for five years.
Mr Adadevoh, however, encouraged both the administration and students of the school to make good use of the library, hoping that the library would create a community of students who would be connected not just by books or subjects but by innovative idea sharing.
“Teachers should be able to look for videos which better illustrates some of the things they teach. We hope that students through the internet can learn to create content or run small experiments and we also hope to see the formation of an ICT club that gets the children to learn coding or ICT related courses,” he said.
The CEO of MTN Ghana pledged his outfit’s commitment to impacting lives positively through such similar projects, hoping that their investment would pay off and the purpose for which the libraries were built would be realised.
He, however, encouraged the authorities, students, and other beneficiaries to adopt a maintenance culture to preserve the facility for future generations.
The Headmaster of the school, Mr Frank Obeng Wilson, revealed that initially, the school only had a small room which was used as a library, adding that it could not contain a lot of the students at a go.
“This was a major challenge to us but today this library has remedied the situation and now 200 students can access the library at a go,” he noted adding that the ICT centre was a plus to enable the students do a lot of research.
Mr Obeng Wilson was grateful to MTN for their kind gesture and promised to maintain the facility.
From Ama Tekyiwaa Ampadu Agyeman, Koforidua
