• The disastrous floods in KwaZulu-Natal during April this year have left lasting damage in the province. 
• This has necessitated the assistance of both the public and private sectors to step in. 
• For its part, iTMaster has paired up with Intel in order to provide some form of technology relief for schools in KZN.

In April, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) suffered one of the largest natural disasters of 2022, as flooding ravaged the entire province, leaving tens of thousands still struggling to this day. In order to address what it can in the education space, iTMaster has partnered with Intel to assist some of the schools in the region.

The organisation, which specialises in managed services and IT consulting, was appointed by Intel to provide a host of IT solutions to the Department of Basic Education (DBE) in KZN.

As such, the agreement between the parties will see the delivery of core IT admin resources and mobile library units to 11 specified schools impacted by the recent flooding.

“2020 put a laser focus on how disproportionate education in South Africa is, particularly for those children who had no access to technology, couldn’t move into a digital schooling environment, and as a result just didn’t go to school for two years,” notes Stanton Pillay (pictured above), CEO at iTMaster.

“It was because of this that, as iTMaster, we decided to focus more of our efforts on partnering with like-minded organisations to work towards providing solutions to the education crisis in South Africa,” he adds in a press release sent to Hypertext.

As mentioned, iTMaster has been tasked with procuring, deploying, and delivering IT equipment to the administration teams of 11 schools in the province. On top of this, the project includes the procurement, development, deployment and delivery of five mobile digital libraries.

The organisation says each library contains 10 notebooks, a content server that can be accessed online or offline, and a mobile charging trolley.

“The digital libraries are not only a source of learning for students and teachers. Their mobile nature means they can be moved around the schools to where they are needed most. This negates the need for costly security solutions as they can be wheeled into a strongroom or moved out of the school to ‘higher ground’ in the event of further flooding,” highlights iTMaster of the digital libraries.

“iTMaster will also provide professional development services to teachers, providing them with the necessary skills to effectively engage with the technology deployed and pass these skills on to learners,” it concludes.