GOAL is probably Guyana’s biggest post-Independence happening

May 22, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I do not want to be too anecdotal, but I feel constrained to rehash a little incident that still has me ruminating. It has to do with a call from an erstwhile Headmaster, who dared me to find an event that can match the GOAL initiative. Guess what? I think I cannot.
First, let me say that I am one of the average Guyanese who really value education. To this end, I completed a fine undergraduate stint at the University of Guyana, and I am now engaged, concurrently, in two post Graduate programmes, one at the University of the West Indies and the other with York University in Canada. Both programmes are via the online mode and both are quite expensive. Now I am saying this because I want as many as possible to cash in on the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) initiative, compliments of our Government. This GOAL initiative, introduced by the Government, aims to grant 20,000 online scholarships to Guyanese in the next five years. We are talking here, at least 100 million USD, to the education sector, over the period of the scholarship granting. The Ministries of Public Service and Education have been tasked with the implementation of this unprecedented venture. I think this will ensure more efficiency in the rollout. The next good thing to note is that Nigerian-born professor, Jacob Opadeyi, is now in charge of GOAL. He is no stranger to things academic in Guyana, as he is a former Vice-Chancellor of UG. Although Nigerian by birth, he is a naturalised citizen of Trinidad and Tobago and so he is ‘regional.’ His academic history is a strong one, too, being at one time Professor of Geomatics Engineering and Land Management at UWI. Jacob Opadeyi, in fact, did obtain his Executive MBA qualifications at the UWI, one of the universities involved in GOAL. This, of course, brings a feeling of optimism in terms of the credibility of the institutions and what is being offered, namely UWI (University of Southern Caribbean (USC) -Trinidad), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) India, JAIN University India and University of Applied Sciences (IUBH) Germany.
Another big plus about this initiative is that many Guyanese, who are from far-flung hinterland areas, will now get the opportunity to earn high-level qualifications without the duress of travel and finance, and when all is said and done, there is no contract to honour. Opadeyi himself explained that the scholarship awardees would not be bonded. “They would (only) be required to do community service stints of varying lengths, based on the respective programmes, before they graduate.” Time is just about up and I hope that Guyanese will ‘cash in’ on this life changing initiative.
Yours truly,
Kamdeo Mohamed

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