SPES is now ready to announce the final findings and recommendations that emerged from our Applied Research Study on Kids with Special Literacy Needs, launched in June 2001, by Lady Sarojini Jugnauth at the Kids Cybercafé we organized on the occasion of our NGO's 34th Anniversary. http://spesmru.intnet.mu/june2k.htm In a nutshell, the aim of the SPES Study was to find out more about the problems, needs and aspirations of Primary School dropouts, directly from the participating kids point of view, and to allow them to express themselves while enjoying learning computer basics and gaining self-esteem.

The SPES Team of specialized Teacher Trainers in New Training Skills and Assessment Competencies created collectively a special Multimedia Questionnaire with friendly cartoon characters. The age of the young participants ranked from 12 - 17 they were all interviewed on an individual basis. There were 56 Audio questions they had to respond to by clicking on "Green for Yes", "Red for No" and "Yellow for Not really".

The recorded replies were totalled and the percentages calculated for correlations for the two groups of the same number of of boys and girls. To be noted that the random sample of participants originated from the 10 Mauritian Districts and were selected by community-based Social Workers. The major findings were that all adolescents with literacy and numeracy problems had various types of intelligence and thus require appropriate specialized teaching. They were all unanimous that they neede and wanted to learn Multi-literacy skills so as to become self-reliant citizens. Testing Several Social Workers also tested our SPES user-friendly programme and were impressed with its reliability and validity and even suggested that all children with literacy problems should answer our computer designed questionnaire, as it makes the child reflect all along.

Infotech 2001 Expo (4 - 6 October)
organized by the National Computer Board and MITIA

In keeping with the Infotech 2001 theme: "enter the e-world", SPES had a stand on Multi-Literacy skills. We had the honour on the Launching Day of having the visit of our Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Finance accompanied by several VIPs and Informatic Experts. Our colourful stand and our demonstrations and "hands on" computer facilities for learning/sharing attracted hundreds of people and many children enjoyed learning computer basics through our special educational games and showed an interest in the display of SPES Crafts and Wizards Soft Toys we use for fun learning/sharing. Two days later SPES also greatly encouraged by the visit of our Prime Minister, as in fact we are propelling Mauritius to become a Cyber Island. We were delighted with the flow of young children, their parents, grandparents, teachers and Young Entrepreneurs who visited our Stand and enjoyed our "hands on" computer learning/sharing facilities and our special education games and creative display of our cuddly soft toys.

In addition, at the SPES Stand we had a special corner for Young Entrepreneurs to learn and register for network participation in the Spain-based First Virtual Congress of Young Entrepreneurs and SMEs, that commences in October 2001 and culminates in March 2002 with a Physical Congress & Expo in Zaragoza. SPES is honoured to have been designated facilitator for this interactivity and e-business promotion organized by the Young Entrepreneur Association of Zaragoza, Spain in collaboration with the European Union, The Spanish Kingdom, and the Government of Aragon.