DELIGHTED youngsters at a Govanhill primary school have each taken possession of new tablets to help them participate in online learning.
Local charity Romano Lav has used more than £16,000 funding from the Scottish Government's Wellbeing Fund to support every pupil at Annette Street Primary School.
Each youngster was given an accessible education pack, including a digital tablet device and craft materials to undertake activities at home with their parents.
Annette Street primary has a high percentage of pupils from Roma backgrounds.
Ashli Mullen, Creative Director of Romano Lav, said: "Roma communities have historically been subject to discrimination, exclusion, and segregation throughout Europe.
"Such practices, far from being eradicated, continue to frustrate the ambitions of many Roma young people in schools throughout Europe today.
"In Govanhill, we are very fortunate to have schools such as our longstanding partners at Annette Street Primary on our doorstep where, with the support of their teachers, real progress is being made by young Roma pupils every day.
"However, as Roma families face disproportionate digital exclusion, without access to devices such as tablets, PCs, and laptops at home, Covid-19 posed new challenges as to how this progress could be maintained at a distance.
"We hope that this intervention helps to alleviate some of those issues and are grateful to our funders for making this possible."
The Romano Lav project was designed to address digital exclusion and address the problem of widening inequality caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
On Monday and Tuesday this week the tablets were given out to parents who arrived at the school to collect them.
Pupils were given their craft packs to take home at the end of the school day.
Blair Biggar, Project Coordinator at Romano Lav, added: "The pandemic poses challenges to us all, but we experience these burdens differently.
"If unaddressed, existing inequalities will be exacerbated.
"We hope that this project is a step forward in tackling digital exclusion more widely throughout Govanhill’s local communities."
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here