Laptop donations for schools

Hi Everyone,

Some of you will remember us asking for help over in 2020 to 2021, when home schooling was happening, and it came to light just how many children were missing out on their education because their families didn't have access to a computer. People were amazingly generous in donating their old laptops, and we managed to refurbish over 40 computers, which were given to Goose Green primary school. Many people also donated some money directly to the school which was used to buy some new and refurbished computers. These were given to families to use for home schooling, and in some cases, teachers used them as the ones given were better equipped to cope with being used for online lessons.

My husband and I are acutely aware of the funding crisis in schools, and the cost of living crisis for families too, and we wanted to see if we could ask again for any old or unused laptops you might have hidden in cupboards (!) or recently replaced, which we could try to put to good use. My husband managed to coax quite a few back to life by converting them to chrome books, which are more than adequate for children to use for their online work and word processing. If you have any you might be able to donate, me and my small folk would be really happy to come and pick them up from you.

We now have links with three local schools, and we are hoping to help as many people as possible, either by getting laptops to schools (so they have to spend less of their budget on new computers) for use by teachers and pupils, or by schools giving the computers to families who are in need. This latter option is particularly important for families with children who are starting secondary school, and will be needing to do their homework on a computer.

About us - we aren't at all from a tech background! I am a mental health social worker, and my husband is a chartered accountant, but he is very good at figuring computers out and getting them going whenever possible. When we occasionally had a computer that couldn't be fixed last time we did this, we could sometimes sell them for a few pounds for parts on Ebay, and then we used that money to buy chargers, keys etc for other computers. That wasn't usual though, and we often just bought the spare parts that we needed. We are doing this just because we discovered this is something that we can do to be helpful, and it seems such a shame when there are unused/seemingly unusable computers hidden away, when they could be wiped and got going again for someone in need to make use of.

If you have a computer you would like to donate, please send me a message and I will get back to you to arrange to pick it up. We can't really do anything with computers with cracked/broken screens, or lots of missing keys (although we sometimes can use those for parts/get replacements if they aren't too old), but we often can do something with computers which are old or slow to make them useful again.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Helen