Pandemic propels poor Mexican students into digital age

A teacher of the Utopia civil association gives a computer science lesson to local children at the Escalerillas neighborhood in Chimalhuacan, Mexico. The Covid-19 pandemic made schools close down but also allowed low-income children living in front of a municipal garbage dump in Mexico get to learn computer science with the help of an NGO. — AFP

SANTA MARÍA CHIMALHUACAN, Mexico: The coronavirus pandemic closed their school, but it also thrust a group of disadvantaged Mexican children living next to a giant garbage dump into the digital world.

A project teaching the students how to use computers and the Internet has given them hope of a life far from the trash mountain where their parents work recycling waste.