September 22, 2024 | Eva Breukink
In a series of interviews, Caribisch Netwerk puts the spotlight on people who fight for a special cause in Curaçao. They want to achieve something and will not be deterred by anything or anyone. What drives these people? Part 6: Ace Suares who believes that every child has the right to access a computer and the internet.
Those who enrich themselves create victims. That always happens at the expense of others. Ace Suares (59) is convinced of that. So no career for Ace in the fast world of internet and software. He chooses a different path, far from the big money.
Ace is an outsider. He and his adopted sister are the only ones in the Groningen village, together with an Ambonese family, who have a bit of color. But that’s not it. He’s also smart and devours books as a little boy. That’s not right. And after his first computer lesson he’s immediately sold. That’s really special.
He immediately has that feeling of ‘anything is possible with this’. You can tell the device what to do and it does it. There is a computer in the administration of the high school. Ace still remembers exactly which one: a Commodore Business Machine 8032. There, in that office of the school secretary, lies the basis of his knowledge of programming and software.
Rather be at school than at home
These are the years that he especially likes not to be home. Ace is already at school an hour before lessons start. The principal gives him the keys to the library and the music room. He is allowed to stay until half past eight in the evening, when the cleaning crew leaves and closes up. He sits behind the computer and when things get too difficult, he picks up a book or plays the piano.
So he programs his first software program for the school. He is fifteen, maybe just sixteen, and is just starting out. This is something new. There are no books about this, the internet doesn’t exist yet. He has to figure everything out himself. Even how the program makes sure that you go to the next one at the end of a line.
Photo archive Ace Suares
In the sixth grade of high school, Ace decides that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life sitting behind a computer day and night. He doesn’t want to become a nerd. He applies for the part-time job he has come to know so well: secretary at his school. He can then spend the rest of the workweek making software programs for schools and in his free time he finally wants to do cultural things. He also hands in the same application letter for the Dutch exam to the principal.
Better for people than for money
His parents and the principal think differently. Those who have pre-university education (vwo) go to study. He starts studying computer science in Nijmegen. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is then, in the late eighties, the latest of the latest. Very interesting, but Ace also knows that success means a job at a large financial institution or the army, making a lot of money at the expense of others. No, he doesn’t want to participate in that.
So after his propaedeutic in computer science, he chooses a different path. One where you don’t disadvantage others. In Nijmegen, he lives in the residential community De Refter. Here, there are a lot of alternative initiatives. One bakes his own bread, others set up a food cooperative and Ace helps build a music practice room and a roof with solar panels.
That’s how he gets involved in the world of environmental organizations, eco-festivals and activism. Those non-profit organizations have computers that have to work together. That’s about software and operating systems. Totally Ace’s thing.
At first he is an unpaid system administrator at large events and protest actions. Then come clients in the cultural sector and the environmental movement, such as pop venue Paradiso and Milieudefensie. All non-profit organizations. He creates networks, trains system administrators and can make a good living from it.
Better to dream than to deceive
Ace realizes all too well how lucky he was that they let him do what he wanted at that high school in the Netherlands. He was always able to earn a living as a system administrator and software developer. He wishes that opportunity for all children, especially in Curacao.
In 2002 he returns to his native island and sees that he can help with the digitalization of education. He brings a wealth of knowledge with him and knows everything about computers and the systems they run on. Ace has a dream: computers and internet in all schools. And that seems to come true when he is appointed by the government in 2013 as ‘program manager digitalization education’.
Ace has nineteen million guilders available, writes a plan for, among other things, the purchase of laptops, the training of ICT coordinators and the creation of educational material. After years of small projects, he finally gets the chance to fix it at all public schools in one go. Now he knows better. Other interests often make the difference. The money ends up somewhere else and not with the children at the schools.
Believe in poor children
Ace is not discouraged and focuses on new projects. ‘Nos ta Konektá’ starts in 2014 in Otrobanda and then continues in Souax, Seru Domi and Nieuw-Nederland. Children get a year of internet at home and borrow a computer. For this they have to come to class every two weeks. Against all expectations, almost all laptops return unharmed. Entire families use the search functions on the internet, the children gain more self-confidence and they perform better at school.
And then there is ‘Luna di Stima’, focused on technology and organized by the after-school education foundation Fundashon Desaroyo i Progreso. The children learn to program, discover with Lego how a gear works, for example, and then make their own robot from Lego.
Ace enjoys it. He sees how those children discover what he discovered as a boy in primary school. That joy, that wonder. With the money from private sponsors, he ensures that various schools that already have internet also get wifi. Because yes, what do you need internet for without wifi?
Tired of fighting
He does it gladly and almost for free, that is his contribution. But it could be better with some support from the government. So he tries again in 2021. No, impossible, is the message. His initiative goes against the plans of the ministry.
Photo archive Ace Suares
And then something snaps. After twenty years of hard work on all those different projects. Not him alone, but a team of passionate people. All that opposition. It’s enough. Ace is tired of fighting.
Sitting behind the computer is no longer so easy. He now works more often with his hands. In the garden, between the plants. Or at the work table. There he tinkers together ‘works of art’ from old computer parts. Yet there are always two or three small projects that he dedicates himself to. Because giving up completely, no, he can’t do that.