Please read this excellent article written for The Chartered Institute for IT’s ITNow Magazine.
From moribund to Malawi: Martin Cooper MBCS reports on The ITSA Digital Trust, a charity which collects unwanted PCs, upcycles them and delivers them to African schools.
After years of hard work and loyal service, office computers eventually become victims of a corporation’s rolling upgrade policy. When their day comes and they’re judged to be no longer shiny and new enough, these PCs are unplugged and, with no work left to do, they can find themselves skipped and tipped.
But with a skilled hand, a hard disk re-image and a few focused hardware upgrades, such computers can still make a very valuable contribution – at least if they’re lucky enough to be rescued by The ITSA Digital Trust.
Based in an unassuming industrial estate on the outskirts of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, The ITSA Digital Trust aims to collect 800 PCs, monitors and laptops each month. It collects them nationally, bringing the machines back to its base where they’re refurbished by a crew of employees and volunteers. With new life breathed into their silicon veins, they’re carefully packaged and shipped to schools in four key African countries.
A good news story all the way
‘Nobody wants to see computers go to landfill. Businesses don’t, schools don’t, and nor do private individuals. We collect used computers, refurbish them and upgrade them’, explains Geoffrey Newsome, The ITSA Digital Trust’s CEO. ‘We then send the computers to schools in east Africa – Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe – where they are desperately wanted and dearly loved. It’s a good news story all-round.’
Please read the full article here https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/supporting-it-teaching-in-africa/