President Faure meets Seychellois students, visits entrepreneur school, Unesco site |30 October 2017

A group of Seychellois students studying at different universities in Mauritius gathered at the Fock Diack Hall on Saturday afternoon to meet President Danny Faure and his delegation on State visit to Mauritius.

Guy Fock, Seychelles’ honorary consul in Mauritius, organised the reception and invited the students.

Mr Fock retraced his business collaboration with Seychelles since the 1970s and applauded the positive and continued development of cooperation in new areas between the two close neighbours.

“The visit of President Faure, accompanied by a strong delegation, shows the desire and willingness of the Seychelles government to ensure more collaboration between the two countries.

He said Seychelles has a great future investing in its young people and the reception was to encourage interactions between the President and his delegation with the students.

Thanking Mr Fock and his family for the initiative, President Faure again commended the long standing friendship between Mauritius and Seychelles.

“My visit is a symbol of our friendship and marks a new phase in our collaboration,” President Faure pointed out.

Addressing the students and other Seychellois present he reminded them that they are the future of our country and called on them to remain focused in their studies to achieve good results to come back and give a helping hand in the economic development of their country.

He reminded them that studying away from home means making a lot of sacrifices but noted that they are not only studying for themselves but for their families and their country.

“I was a student and I know it is not easy but you have to take your studies seriously and become the well trained cadres that our country really needs,” he told the students, calling on them to continue to raise Seychelles flag high always.

He also had words of encouragement for all the Seychellois working in Mauritius.

While they are happy with and eager to complete their studies and equally very happy to meet President Faure, many of the students expressed disappointment that they were not able to have time to air some of their concerns to the President and the Minister for Family Affairs Jeanne Simeon.

“We were hoping to be able to tell the President about our concerns but the interactions were  short,” Davis Mathiot, who is studying for a BSc in public relations and advertising at Middlesex University lamented.

“We are striving to achieve good results as this is the aim of all of us but we have several issues relating to housing rent which is very high here and if we want to achieve good results we need to be safe and finding somewhere safe to live is very expensive and we find it very difficult to cope financially. Above that we have to spend 48 Seychelles rupees everyday to travel to and from university and not to forget the cost of living which has risen considerably here. We have utilities and food costs as well,” he said.

Other students who wanted to remain anonymous nodded in agreement.

Marie -France Barra, a mother of two who has left her family back home to pursue her studies  for an MSc in Business Information also at Middlesex University, said they have to share rent costs but even doing this is not of much help and there are times that their stipends are late.

Another student said it would be good for the ANHRD and other authorities to look seriously into the matter as not all students studying abroad are having a good life because the cost of living vary from country to country.

“We call for the ministries and agencies concerned to come over and see for themselves how we are really fending,” she said.

Meanwhile young entrepreneurs, students developing their skills in creating Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality content for industry and education in architecture, multimedia design, phone applications and product visualisation, game creation at the Mauritian Entrepreneur School were able to demonstrate their abilities to President Danny Faure  when he visited on Saturday morning.

On the last day of his State visit to Mauritius on Saturday morning President Danny Faure and his delegation visited the EON Reality Mauritius Regional Headquarters and the Entrepreneur School at Ebene Cyber City. He was accompanied on a tour of the headquarters and the school by EON chief executive, Prakash Padaruth, as well as other key personnel of the institution.

EON Reality is a multinational virtual reality and augmented reality software developer headquartered in Irvine, California which established a regional headquarters in Mauritius in   2015.

President Faure and his delegation first followed a presentation on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality and the different training the school offers and the different programmes the young people work on and how the different applications developed can boost education in different fields.

President Faure expressed his amazement and described this development as a real breakthrough in education, something which Seychelles could start venturing into.

Having worked in education President Faure said applications that can boost education development is a powerful tool that students cannot be denied.

After the presentations President Faure toured the facilities being put in place to develop a virtual aquarium and watched project developments and underwater life through 3D glasses.

Leaving the Cyber City President Faure visited another important Unesco World Heritage Site, Le Morne Cultural Landscape, in the south of the island.

Situated at the bottom of the Le Morne Brabant, the highest mountain on the island, Le Morne Cultural Landscape has a series of monuments to the slaves at its base.

It is the door of liberty and a symbol of the slaves’ fight for freedom, their suffering, and their sacrifices.

It was declared a Unesco heritage site in 2008. In the early 19th century the Le Morne Mountain was a refuge for runaway slaves who did not want to be recaptured by their masters but preferred to die throwing themselves from the mountain down on the rocks.

President Faure laid a wreath at the main monument to the slaves after receiving detailed explanations on each of the other smaller monuments.