BACKGROUND
The Prison Connectivity Project is one of the interventions of GIFEC to extend ICT to the unserved and underserved.
The purpose of the ICT Centres is to provide basic training in computer use as well as Information and Communication Technology to staff and inmates. The desire to make Computer studies and ICT training available for inmates, just like the formal classroom educational programmes now available in prisons, evolves from the belief that an educated inmate is less likely to involve himself in violent and other anti-social activities when he is discharged from prison and reintegrated into the society.
OBJECTIVES
- To establish state of the art ICT Training Centre at the Prisons Training School in order to promote and facilitate access to information through the internet to the intended beneficiaries.
- To provide training in computer skills and literacy to the target beneficiaries.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
At the end of the project, beneficiaries would have had the following benefits:
- Access to computers free of charge.
- Acquisition of requisite skill and competence to use the computer as a tool in the execution of their duty.
- Access to information through the internet.
- Running of new programs in Distance Learning for Inmates.
- Reformed inmates to come out with employable ICT skills.
NEED ASSESSMENT
The requisite need assessment done has revealed that:
- The Prisons service Training School is not adequately resourced to train new recruits in ICT.
- It is very expensive for the Prisons Service to enroll their staff for ICT training elsewhere. Equipping the training school with an ICT lab would reduce the financial constraints and enhance IT skills of the service personnel.
- The establishment of an ICT lab at the training school would give the needed privacy and security for specific ICT training requirement of the service men/women.
- The establishment of an ICT lab with restricted internet access to inmates of the prisons will go a long way to equipping the inmates with useful IT skills which might come handy when they come out of prisons.
ITEMS SUPPLIED
- Eighteen (18) prison centres, including Nsawam Female Prison, have been equipped with computer laboratories.
- Eleven (11) other stations are in line for a centre this year 2015 ( with 110 computers and accessories ear marked for them)
- Five hundred (500) mobile phones
- Three hundred and sixty five (365) desktop computers and ups.
- Eighteen (18) air conditioners
- Eighteen (18) scanners
- Ten (10) projectors
- Eighteen (18) printers
- Ten (10) servers
- Seventy five (75) prisons personnel have been trained as trainer of trainers