Mohomou Prepares for a Computer Resource Center
Alex Adjei is a RESPECT volunteer that has collected 420 letters from six different refugee schools for the letter exchange program, including Mohomou Refugee School. He has volunteered there for the last fourteen years since he fled the civil war in his native Liberia in 1990. Today, Alex is one of many in his community who will be helping to install computers in the new computer resource center to allow a broader range of communication for its estimated 2,000 students.
The community has come together to transform an old transit center for refugees into a computer resource center for the students, refugees, and Guineans in the community of Nzerekore, Guinea in West Africa, where the school is located. "The computer center is a complete block building with five rooms and a very big sitting room which is to be [used] for the school." There are iron doors and the windows are covered with steel bars. The building also lacks a coat of paint.
Resources are limited and "the volunteer teachers are paid very low," Alex says. "[The students] need more exposure and more school materials like copybooks, pencils, pens, calculators, sporting materials, and friends."
Funds raised in Michigan under the leadership of Judy Huyhn and her students at Palo Community School helped pay for 12 computers last November, but the school is still in need of more supplies and support. More information is available on the Mohomou Refugee School website. Any help is greatly appreciated by the entire community.
The computer resource center is needed because it will allow students to connect with their pen pals as well as access information. In developing nations such as Guinea, technology is still quite foreign and the construction of a computer center is a step towards bringing the youth into contact with the changing world around them. In the midst of this, the computer and internet becomes the window to the world.
Donations for the lab can be made through RESPECT's website. Please e-mail us to indicate your donation is to be earmarked for the computer centre in Guinea. If you have other ideas on how you can help, please e-mail Marc Schaeffer at respect@respectrefugees.org.