HIS body language and facial expression suggested modesty, dignified good manners and a definite reluctance to show off.

But Damion Bartley, head boy of Saint Vincent Strambi Catholic High School in St Elizabeth, couldn’t suppress immense satisfaction as he contemplated the impact of his school’s new computer laboratory following its formal opening recently.

“It is certainly more sophisticated than all the other labs in most of the prominent high schools in Jamaica,” the teenager told Career & Education, while watching his schoolmates happily browsing the Internet.

“There is going to be a lot of envy there,” he added with a chuckle.

Built and equipped at a cost estimated by school principal Father Samuel Allogia at $4 million, the lab, complete with 40 computers, was assisted in great measure by a $2.520-million gift from the National Commercial Bank (NCB) Foundation.

A charitable offshoot of the NCB, the foundation lays claim to a desire to assist Jamaica’s development “through strategic partnerships”. It has paid special attention to education and training, including the upgrading of information technology facilities, and boasts of having donated more than 500 computers to Jamaican schools and community groups.

Carlos Gordon, manager of the Junction branch of NCB, said his company’s support of the computer project at St Vincent Strambi was motivated by the ongoing need for a properly educated and trained population and for the creation of “change agents” among young people.

Gordon, like other speakers at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, cautioned students of the school located just outside the centre of the Bull Savannah farming village, that the computer lab should be used to enhance their lives and their education and not for “negative” purposes.

Deacon Denis Hendriks, Chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mandeville, noted that computers had become such an integral part of everyday life, “that we can’t imagine how we coped without them previously”.

Jamaicans should be thankful for the human “ingenuity” that had rendered possible the tools of information technology. But he warned that “there is always the danger that we can end up viewing (computers) as ends in themselves”. Machines, he argued, should be used as “tools to enable us to be more humane, not for ill”.

Father Samuel told an attentive audience of students, parents and well-wishers that information technology allowed humanity to become more integrated in a “single worldwide community”. It presented an opportunity for human beings to “rule the world with justice and humanity”, he said.

The priest, a Frenchman who has been in Jamaica “for many years” and is now seeking Jamaican citizenship, says the computer lab, housed on an unfinished second floor, will also serve the needs of the community. In September, he says, an Internet café will be in place which will be open to residents from the surroundings.

The computer project represents just one phase of ongoing expansion at St Vincent Strambi. Father Samuel told Career & Education that there are plans for a sixth form classroom and a natural science laboratory.

Opened in 1994 with 60 students as a private institution by the Roman Catholic Passionist Order to meet the “special needs” of Bull Savannah and surrounding communities, the school has grown to a complement of 200 students – from 11-year-olds to the CXC age group. Eleven CXC subject areas are covered, including business and the sciences.

The long-term plan, says Father Samuel, is to limit numbers to 300 in order to “maintain standards”. Current school fees are set at $45,000 per year which he claims “are the cheapest in the whole island” among privately run high schools.

While the school has set out specifically to “help” students who have “struggled” academically at primary school level, Father Samuel says the results at CXC are outstanding and getting better all the time.

“Our results are very good. Every year they improve and last year we had an 82 per cent pass rate in CXC,” he said.

As an outgrowth of the school project, the Passionists are also planning acquisition of adjacent land for the building of a community centre.

“We realise that there are youth on the road a lot of the times with nothing to do, no real community centre to keep them busy…” Father Samuel explained.

The community centre will also double as a sports centre for the school.