Valley of Peace opens computer centre

For better or for worse, technology has infiltrated the lives of Belizeans all over the country. And on Monday technology found its way to the Valley of Peace in the Cayo District with the inauguration of an internet cafe and community data centre. The centre comes equipped with three state of the art computers and high speed satellite internet. The project was financed by the Belize Rural Development Programme which contributed twenty-five thousand dollars and is run by the village-based cooperative, El Progresso, which matched by the funds. According to B.R.D.P. Project Director Karl Geoppert, the Valley of Peace initiative may serve as a model for rural areas that have thus far remained on the sidelines of the digital revolution.

Karl Geoppert, Project Director, B.R.D.P.
“We will monitor very carefully how the Internet Café will develop because if it develops well we have plans to provide perhaps forty or fifty more internet cafes in remote areas all over the country and also to provide computers to schools and to connect schools to high speed internet. So we hope that it will work well and from this situation maybe we slowly go back and perhaps even in very remote areas we may install a solar system and use laptops in order to see what impact it has and who would be using it.”

Residents will be charged a small fee to access the web. Two other internet cafes have already been set up in Laguna and San Miguel in the Toledo District.