Aricent supports Soweto ICT training school

Aricent South Africa, a wholly owned company of Aricent, a global innovation, technology and services company focused exclusively on communications, has proudly supported Dipalo School over the last two years by way of funding and new PC hardware donations to the value of R51 250, in order to assist in their valuable IT training initiatives.

Dipalo School of Information and Communication Technology was established in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002 as a non-profit organisation, with the view to making a contribution towards the eradication of obstacles to IT training encountered by persons from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.

The objectives of the school are:

* To provide free training in PC literacy; this training is aimed particularly at children attending schools that do not provide PC literacy to learners, and unemployed youths who have not had exposure to training in PC literacy.
* To provide free training in PC engineering, network installation and administration and software development to unemployed graduates and unemployed matriculants from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.
* To create opportunities for Dipalo School trainees to acquire practical work experience in order to enhance their prospects of employment as IT professionals.

Dipalo School initially offered training in PC construction and maintenance with a number of used, obsolete Pentium Is, which students could pull apart and reassemble. In 2004, the school acquired new Pentium IV PCs that were used for literacy classes, which meant that no equipment was available for the practical aspects of the PC hardware training where machines could be taken apart.

“Thanks to the donation of hardware equipment by Aricent to Dipalo School, we have now been able to restore the practical side of the training in PC hardware. With this equipment, we will be able to build at least 20 PCs, with the involvement of the trainees in each step of the construction. An earlier cash donation by Aricent to Dipalo also enabled us to buy networking equipment,” said Roseinnes Phahle, Founder and Executive Chairman at Dipalo School.

During 2008, Dipalo trained in excess of 140 unemployed youth, some of whom were able to gain employment in IT-related fields before completion of their course.

All the computer components donated by Aricent are brand new, with which the school has built one PC, at a cost of R1 500 for the casings and drives. Aricent hopes that Dipalo will sell the PCs it is building and thereby convert the donation in kind to one in cash, and at the same time, training their students in the construction of PCs.

The future of Dipalo is entirely dependent on how much funding is received by way of donations, which was the main driver for Aricent supporting their valuable initiative.