Docomo Pacific donates over $170K to PSS libraries

Docomo Pacific has launched the second phase of its five-year One Marianas initiative by donating over $170,000 to the purchase of laptops for all 21 public schools on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.

Last Friday, Docomo Pacific’s team crashed the Public School System’s Teacher Development workshop with a wonderful surprise—a donation of $178,500 to be used to purchase brand new laptops for the libraries of CNMI public schools.

According to Docomo Pacific chief executive officer Rod Boss, the donation will benefit students in the CNMI.

“We presented a check to PSS for the purchase of computers for the school system of the CNMI [because] we’re a technology company and, for us, the kind of services we provide is very personal. It’s something that everyone has with them, it’s something they use to communicate and we feel like what we do has the ability to change people’s lives and we give a lot of thought on how we can affect the most [number of] people and be able to give a little back to our communities and this is the way we’ve chosen to do this,” he said.

Dino Manning, vice president of Docomo Pacific and general manager of Docomo Pacific CNMI, explained that the donation is only a phase of a greater scheme of giving back to the CNMI that they have decided to call the “One Marianas” initiative.

“We call this the ‘One Marianas’ initiative and we focused on three areas and the three areas we focused on was education, public safety, and health. What we’ve come to realize and what we all agreed upon and collaborated with our community leaders and other business partners is that these areas are fundamental to the overall development of our community and economic development of our community. The idea is to keep kids healthy, keep our community safe, and educate our community,” he said.

Manning said the initiative came to life after their Atisa cable was installed and the support of the community was so overwhelming that Docomo decided they wanted to show their appreciation through a strategic plan.

“We got a lot of overwhelming support from the community and this is our way of giving back,” he said.

Bonnie Pangelinan, PSS associate commissioner for student and support services, said that PSS libraries have changed so much over the years and are now collaborative places where students come to learn and do research.

“What a great place to funnel this need…with the goal of providing equitable access to learning environments such as our library, with the goal of increasing the digital tools that they have…so that not just our students…are able to collaborate and access education. We decided it was the perfect place,” she said.

“We are beginning a wonderful…partnership with Docomo Pacific that benefits our entire community and this is huge…we are very grateful to Docomo for extending a hand,” she added.