‘Lola Techie’ is real, alive in Alaminos City

ALAMINOS CITY—Move over, “Lola Techie.”

TV’s “Lola Techie,” a character in a telecommunication company’s advertisement played by a grandmother who is technologically savvy, has a real-life version in 69-year-old Sonia Dona, a resident of this city.

Dona, wife of a farmer in Barangay Makatiw here, used to be computer illiterate. She wanted to use her son’s computer at home to use Skype to talk with her six-year-old granddaughter in Ireland. But she was afraid to touch the machine, and would wait for somebody to turn it on.

She misses the little girl, whom she reared but left last year to join her mother who works as a caregiver in Ireland.

But today, Dona, who finished second year high school, is no longer afraid of computers. She has learned the basics of computer operations after undergoing training at the Computer Van Aralan conducted by the Ai Hu Foundation Inc., a Taiwan-based nongovernment organization, the party-list group ABS and the city government.

“I thought I was not qualified to enroll because I am already old. But I was accepted. Now I know the fundamentals of computer operations, like turning on and shutting down the machine, how to use the mouse, how to create files. I did not know it was that easy,” Dona says.

Dona is one of 191 residents from eight villages of Alaminos who underwent a free  18-day basic computer training. The trainees included students, out-of-school youth and unemployed adults who were willing to spend two and a half hours daily to train in a van equipped with computers.

The youngest was Maybelle Dasalla, a Grade 6 pupil of Cabatuan Elementary School here.