A Little Glimpse Into The Refurbishing Process

When someone requests a computer, I try to gauge the financial need of the family. And if they truly appear to be in a position where they can't afford to buy one then I obviously feel great empathy for them. But what most non-techies don't seem to realize is the tremendous amount of time & devotion required to ensure each computer we donate is working perfectly. No computer takes less than 2 hours to prepare and often much longer. Shown here are two of our dedicated volunteers, Bruce & Chris, hard at work on a Sunday morning. Here's a photo of a computer motherboard that Bruce is salvaging. To date we've had about 35 techies volunteer their time but have only been able to activate less than 10 because of a lack of coordinators. This all important role involves receiving e-mails from donors and coordinating the delivery to the techies and then subsequent delivery to the families. Many people are now working on developing a more automated way of doing this, but it takes time. The great thing is that once the technology is developed, we'll be able to share it with communities elsewhere, to help them help others. Together we can really can bridge the digital divide!