Waterloo Charitable Trust Donates $95,000 to Anglican Cathedral College

The Waterloo Charitable Trust has donated $95,000 to the Anglican Cathedral College (ACC) to support the refurbishment and upgrading of its Information Technology (IT) lab.

The cheque was handed over during the school’s weekly Wednesday morning mass in a brief ceremony attended by students and staff. Lord Michael Ashcroft personally presented the donation to ACC Principal Paulette Augustus.

The donation will fund a complete overhaul of the facility. Forty new computers are being provided, thirty of which will go into the lab itself, with the remaining ten designated for remedial math and English instruction in the literature room and library. The renovation also includes a new ceiling, tiled flooring, brand new desks and chairs, and two large flat-screen monitors mounted on the wall.

Lord Ashcroft traced the relationship back to 1994, when he made his first contribution to establish a computer lab at the school at a time when computers were just beginning to be widely produced.

“I’m very pleased to be able to come back here and for all of you to be able to enhance the computer lab,” he said, telling students that the innovations in technology and artificial intelligence they will witness over their lifetimes “will be beyond what you can think about today.”

Augustus said the timing could not be better. She described the lab’s condition before the donation as “not conducive at all” to learning, despite technology being a subject taught across multiple disciplines at the school.

“We are preparing our students and envisioning what we want our students to achieve in leaving ACC and being technologically sound in order to be equipped for the jobs that they can get into,” Augustus said. “With this whole development and renewal of the lab, there is so much more that we can accomplish. Our teachers now have the resources that they need to teach.”