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Post: In an effort to connect Gaza’s beleaguered children with the world, the United Nations is distributing tablets to hundreds of Palestinians in the Strip.

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The United Nations has distributed tablets to hundreds of students in the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that the initiative aims to connect beleaguered Palestinian children with the outside world.

Children make up nearly half of the estimated population of 2.3 million people in Gaza, most of whom have not been able to leave the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.

About 890 tablets were distributed to schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) this week, after testing several dozen devices on children last year.

“We know very well that children, as they grow up, need to be able to cope with an increasingly digital world,” Thomas White, the agency’s director in Gaza, told AFP.

Frequent outages and bad internet connection.

Israel’s 15-year blockade of the Gaza Strip has crippled Gaza’s economy and left 74% of young graduates unemployed, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

UNRWA is considering an EU-funded project to improve children’s computer skills as a way to increase their chances of finding work in the growing technology sector, both locally and remotely.

It could “give an income to young people in Gaza and survive,” said Thomas White, in a Gaza City schoolyard.

He added: “The project can help young people in Gaza to enter the world of programming, provide information technology support, provide work support for corporate offices or help users through the Internet.”

But Gazans still face frequent power outages, and Internet connectivity is limited to second-generation cell phones.

Salma Shamia, 13, got a new tablet after excelling at her summer tech school. “I hope to learn programming in the future and have a programming company in Gaza,” he said in a classroom full of computers.

He added: “I feel that Gaza is falling behind schedule. In the future, I hope that programming takes over the world and we do useful and wonderful things.”

Source: EuroNews

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