Kevin Allerston
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 26/05) - Six young offenders have completed a summer-long course on how to fix computers.

The course was offered by Computers for Schools, a program that fixes old computers and donates them to schools. This time though, the students got to keep the computers they rebuilt.

Amrik Kanwal (right) and Steve Poitras spent the summer teaching six students from the Young Offenders Facility how to repair computers as a part of the Smart Communities program. - Kevin Allerston/NNSL photo

One 18-year-old (young offenders cannot be named) said the program got him thinking about going to college and possibly becoming a computer technician.

"I was always interested in computers. Mostly playing games and just fooling around with it," the young-man said. "Now I'm more interested in going back to school," he said.

"If you get the certificate and go back to college and get all that stuff done, the money is good," the teen said.

He said if he hadn't taken part in the program, he would probably have spent the summer cleaning up places like Fred Henne park.

All the young offenders volunteered to be in the program.

The goal, said instructor Amrik Kanwal, is to give the youths basic knowledge of computers and to help them on a positive path. Also, it is to send more computer technicians back to Northern communities.

"Most of the young offenders are from the communities, so it's a good idea to have them trained so that when they go back they can have knowledge of computers," Kanwal said.

Steve Poitras, a course instructor, found the youths "very receptive. The course gave them a chance to show them how they could improve themselves.

"It helps them forget a little bit about the condition that society gives them and shows them how to improve," Poitras said.