16 Jun 2009
Charity Computer Aid International is turning to Twitter today to source used PCs from UK organisations to help equip education and health projects in Africa.
Followers of the charity are being encouraged to use Twitter to publicise the drive for 10,000 PCs to be donated in the next four weeks – with an initial aim of 1,000 PCs in the first four hours of the online campaign.
Computer Aid professionally refurbishes PCs and laptops in its London workshop and ships them for re-use in schools, hospitals and community organisations in developing countries.
The charity is the most experienced non-profit provider of IT for development, having provided almost 150,000 PCs and laptops to support e-learning, e-health, e-inclusion and e-agriculture projects in more than 100 countries such as Rwanda, Ecuador and Zambia.
“We are experiencing an incredible increase in orders of PCs from schools, hospitals, universities and community organisations. We estimate there are thousands of PCs currently collecting dust today in back rooms and store cupboards across the country and we are urging people to take action and get involved in the Computer Aid Twitterthon to help raise awareness of this need and meet the demand,” said Computer Aid founder Tony Roberts.
“Reusing old PCs is much better for the environment than recycling them down to their component parts and it also provides an invaluable opportunity for disadvantaged schoolchildren who would otherwise have no access to IT in education. We can put a PC on a school desk in Africa within six weeks of receiving the donation and we estimate that one donated PC will deliver at least a further three years’ use."
To support the “Twitterthon” campaign, follow Computer Aid at http://www.computeraid.org/twitterthon.htm or visit http://www.computeraid.org/tweet4c harity for more information.
Computing is a long-term partner of Computer Aid and helps to raise funds as well as promote the charity’s activities to IT professionals in the UK. A separate campaign currently underway is seeking sponsors for a vital telemedicine project in rural Africa – click here for more details.
Thanks for the used PCs but, no thank you. Visit the mountain of e-wastes in Africa to get the point. How do places without electricity power the PCs? Does it end with just sending the PC? How about the software licence? Africa does not need aid nor charity. It simply has poor leadership that use their national treasuries as personal piggy banks. IT professionals should twit their local representatives to take up the issues with their elected governments who in turn must challenge their African counter parts. That is the only way to help help Africa. Donating your cheap old pcs that will end up in the burning heap someplace in Africa is killing Africans.
The schools and hospitals in Africa has cheap labour that need clerical jobs like filling forms and sorting a mountain of hard copy files. Your cheap computer might take away those jobs for a while but the social side of the systems is never thought by those NGOs that has become the new middle class with mobile phones. Help Africa help itself!
Posted by: Beauty - nigeriawhatisnew.newsvine.com 19 Jul 2009
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