Children living in the area of the City of Vilnius will get more than 5 000 PCs and tablets for remote learning

Today, the City of Vilnius started distributing PCs and tablets which it received from the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport to those, who needed them the most – pupils from socially disadvantaged families and large families. About 500 PCs and almost 5 000 tablets have been distributed, thus supplying nearly all pupils of Vilnius with tools which they lacked. The value of the distributed tablets alone is more than EUR 800 000.

“Important learning tools are coming to homes of residents of Vilnius. If having a PC for each pupil did not seem that important before quarantine, now the need for this equipment became apparent. What the City can do is to try to ensure that pupils of any age have the proper conditions for conveniently learning at home. I want to rejoice not only over the support offered by businesses or the state, but also that individual residents also actively joined the initiative donating various equipment: monitors, tablets, laptops – more than a hundred of them in total”, said Vytautas Mitalas, the Deputy Mayor of the capital.

Earlier, the City of Vilnius received support through the initiative “Mokykla Namuose” (Home School) when SEB bank donated 50 desktop computers and Bayer donated 100 laptops, which were already distributed to children. All these tools were first delivered to the City, which distributed them to educational institutions according to the needs expressed by schools, which in turn handed out the equipment to their pupils.

Equipment was first of all distributed to those, who lack funds and resources – children receiving free meals, also children from large families and children with disabilities. PCs and tablets were also distributed to schools according to the need which they identified in the survey conducted trying to find out which tools children needed to participate in the educational process. Where possible, PCs were distributed to pupils in higher grades and tablets – to younger pupils. After all schools are supplied with equipment, the remaining PCs or tablets will go to kindergartens of the capital.

It has been almost a month now that students in the capital have been studying at home due to quarantine, which resulted in a number of challenges, one of which was a lack of remote learning communication and work tools. Having surveyed school communities, it turned out that pupils needed more than 1 700 PCs necessary to do tasks and communicate with teachers and classmates. Large families, also working families with just 1 PC at home, faced the biggest challenges.