Television to the Aid of Schools

AGREEMENT. Cl@se, CISNEROS GROUP’S EDUCATIONAL CHANNEL, ARRIVES IN DOMINICAN SCHOOLS AND HOMES THROUGH A PARTNERSHIP WITH WIND TELECOM.

The programming of the Cl@se channel is geared to children and youth 6 to 18 years of age, teachers, and parents, covering topics such as languages, culture, science, mathematics and professional training.

Santo Domingo - Last year, Wind Telecom, the television services company, signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education called “Wind en la escuela,” through which students from more than 400 public schools in Santo Domingo and Santiago already have free access to educational and cultural programs broadcast by international television channels to supplement the work of teachers in the classroom.

José Clase, Director of Wind Telecom, explained that the channels which were initially part of the "Wind en la escuela" program were Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, Discovery Civilization, Discovery Turbo, Animal Planet, Biography, and The History Channel. Cl@se channel is now added.

Cl@se is the first educational channel in Latin American television, which since 1996, offers the best in international educational entertainment 24 hours a day without commercials. Maria Ignacia Arcaya, Director of the channel, said that this initiative started as a corporate social responsibility initiative by Gustavo Cisneros, founder of the Cisneros Group, to contribute to education in the region.

Beginnings
"Through their channels and businesses, the Cisneros Group has always been in the world of entertainment, production and distribution of cable television channels, thus creating an educational channel was a natural step and we leveraged the media to take educational content to subscriber homes and schools in an entertaining way, "said Arcaya.

With the necessary technical equipment already in their hands, they only had to answer one question: What to offer as content? They began studies on Latino cultural and educational television and concluded that as a regional channel offering content that would support the learning process they should embrace universal themes relevant to schools anywhere. So they did.

"Throughout these 13 years we have gone through several stages, but our objectives remain the same: to provide entertainment as a tool to educate and be an alternative in educational entertainment in homes," emphasizes the Director of the Cl@se channel.

Arrival in the DR
Cl@se, in alliance with Fundación Cisneros, contributes to improving the quality of education in Latin America by providing tools that stimulate students’ and teachers’ learning and creativity while giving importance to an entertaining education.

Its scope (nearly one million subscriber households and more than 30 thousand schools on the continent) encouraged Wind Telecom to include it in its "Wind en la escuela" initiative and also provide service to subscribers in Wind to DR. José Clase affirms it has been a success.

"There has been incredible feedback through the website with our customers asking about the channel and its language programs, and colleges asking why we only offer it to public schools," says Clase, adding that the channel is already part of other agreements, such as one with a professional school and in the future, with prisons.

With Cl@se, there are eight channels that are part of "Wind en la escuela," but José Clase shows interest in including a ninth. "We want to dedicate space to an educational channel with local material, we want the Secretary of Education to establish a department to create content, but this is still only a dream," he said.