GAZA, Palestinian Territories — The
UN said
Wednesday it was helping connect Palestinian children in the blockaded Gaza
Strip to the outside world by distributing tablets to hundreds of pupils.
اضافة اعلان
Children make up nearly half of
Gaza’s population of
2.3 million. Most of them have never been able to leave the coastal territory.
Some 890 tablets are being handed out this week at
schools run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, following a pilot
that saw a few dozen devices given to children last year.
“We’re very conscious that for children as they
grow, they’re going to have to be able to engage with an increasingly
digitalized world,” Thomas White, the agency’s Gaza director, told AFP.
The 15-year blockade of the enclave led by Israel
has crippled Gaza’s economy, leaving 74 percent of young graduates unemployed,
according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
The EU-funded project to boost children’s computer
skills is seen by
UNRWA as a way to increase their chances of getting a job in
the growing tech sector, either locally or remotely.
This could “provide opportunities for young
Gazans to make an income and get ahead,” White said, standing in a school yard in Gaza
City.
The project could help young Gazans go into coding,
providing back office IT support for companies or customer support online, he
added.
But Gazans still have to contend with frequent power
cuts and internet access limited to 2G.
Thirteen-year-old Salma Shamiah was among those to
receive a new tablet, after excelling at a tech summer school.
“I hope to learn programming in the future and have
a programming company in Gaza,” she said in a classroom filled with computers.
“I feel that Gaza is behind in programming. I expect
in the future programming will be dominant in the world and we will do useful
and beautiful things.”
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