THOUSANDS of Earthquake affected Nepalese school children thought Santa came early, with an Australian entrepreneur spending his Christmas rebuilding a local school computer lab.
The Give a Laptop founder, Ryan Saville visited the Himalayas last month to set up laptops donated by Australians as part of a bigger plan to re-build a computer lab destroyed by the quake.
“The next Einstein or Jobs could be a child living in a remote village in Nepal and we’re really humbled to be here, giving back to this community.” said Ryan.
“Usually, we send one laptop at a time but for this trip, I am delivering 25 thanks to our donors and a generous computer recycling business in Queensland.”
The charity was set up after Ryan returned from a trip to Everest Base Camp almost 12 months ago where he witnessed the devastation at the earthquakes epicentre first hand.
“I was compelled to do something to help and had initially arranged for Colgate to send over 7.5 thousand toothbrushes.” said Ryan.
Ryan was walking around handing out toothbrushes to villagers when he came across the school and the decimated computer room.
“There were about 15 jurassic desktop computers lying around which were soo old, they still had floppy drives,” he said.
“The next Einstein or Jobs could be a child living in a remote village in Nepal and we’re really humbled to be here, giving back to this community.”
“It was there amongst the ruins of one of the oldest places on earth that the idea for Give a Laptop was born,” he said.
In his search for larger donors, Ryan connected with G1 Asset Managements Co-Founder, Joel Prokic. In Australia, electronic waste is growing three times faster than any other type of waste, with millions of televisions, computers and mobile phones discarded each year.
Joel Prokic has built a successful business keeping more than 500 tonnes of e-waste out of landfill by repurposing as much possible and recycle what can’t be reused.
“One of the bigger concerns for anyone considering giving a laptop or computer away is whether the data has been securely destroyed,” said Joel.
“We offer complete assurance that all the data will be destroyed before any equipment is repurposed.”
“One of the bigger concerns for anyone considering giving a laptop or computer away is whether the data has been securely destroyed.”
“After hearing Ryan’s story we jumped on board and have initially provided 20 laptops at our cost for his trip to Nepal.”
Over the past 6 months Ryan had been working out the logistics of getting the donated laptops to Kathmandu.
“We can send one laptop at a time for $30 from Australia, but for this trip I have had to speak with customs officials to make sure I could travel with all of the laptops,” he said.
“Its not the easiest process but I got the all clear.” Ryan plans to spend a total of two months in the Himalayas setting up the laptops and software for the schools pilot computer lab.
G1 Asset Management provides secure decommissioning services for corporate IT assets, and can help to facilitate a charitable outcome such as this for your company.
To find out more, visit g1.com.au.
