ABOUT FORESEE
The Foresee Foundation (4C-Foundation) was established in 2013 with vision to bring 21st century learning to St. Maarten classrooms. The four “C”s stand for the Foundation’s vision and symbolize the important 21st century skills needed to prepare students for a globalized and highly technological world: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical thinking.
Foresee is a small foundation and is supported by project teams for its different projects. The Foundation believes in the knowledge, skills, dedication and enthusiasm of young St. Maarteners and therefore makes all efforts to include them in their organization.
At the start of 2014 it launched DigKidz@St. Maarten, a comprehensive ICT project aimed at providing students, teachers and management with the infrastructure, tools and training to make learning and teaching more engaging and productive in a technology driven world. After a successful pilot in the largest primary school on the island, the Hillside Christian School, two more DigiKidz school projects were implemented in 2014 and 2015.
In addition to the DigiKidz project, the Foundation helped established a multi-media lab in St. Maarten’s public library. This project offers students, teachers and schools the ability to attend courses and workshops on the use of social media and other modern digital learning tools.
In November 2015, the first Caribbean Technology & Education Conference (C-TEC) was organized with the aim of having local, regional and international educators collaborate with each other and share the use of technology in its countries and at the schools.
Most of Foresee’s projects were funded by Caribbean-based Windsong International Foundation, a philanthropic charity foundation geared towards providing educational assistance for children under the age of 18 years. They have made the initial project donations in partnership with other local stakeholders as they see the importance of investing in innovative educational projects in the Caribbean and beyond.
Through corporate sustainability initiatives, Foresee Foundation has been able to expand its projects. With the generous additional donations of the local community and UNESCO, Foresee was able to pursue some other endeavours and is in the process of adding two new projects, DigiTeenz and DigiWorkz. DigiTeenz will be the successor to the DigiKidz project focusing on secondary education, while DigiWorkz introduces students to the exciting world of maker spaces, coding and other activities encouraging the use of creative and thinking skills.
After the huge success of C-TEC 2015, Foresee is working toward a 2nd C-TEC conference, making it even bigger and better while ensuring that this will become an annual event, putting technology, education and St. Maarten on the map.