Buckingham charity, Cloudy Foundation, and partnering local business, CloudyIT, are supporting schools and disadvantaged children by donating refurbished laptops, desktops and tablets during the current COVID-19 lockdown.
Their pioneering ‘Donate2Educate’ initiative launched on 18 January 2021 to help equip local school children with refurbished devices that will allow them to learn from home during lockdown.
Despite the Government ordering 1.3 million laptops for youngsters without essential equipment during the pandemic, only around 800,000 have so far been delivered and there are still almost one million children without a device.
Working alongside partners, local people and businesses are asked to donate their old, unwanted laptops and PCs to be recycled and put to good use with a child that needs it for learning.
CloudyIT engineers provide a factory reset reconditioning service before providing the updated tech to education partners: Transitions UK and three Buckingham schools, Bourton Meadow Academy, George Grenville Academy and Lace Hill Academy, who are allocating them to local families most in need.
Since reaching the campaign’s original target of 50 devices, a number that derived from partners’ identification of specific school children in danger of missing vital weeks of education, Cloudy Foundation has joined forces with the complementary “Laptops for Learners” fundraising campaign from the University of Buckingham, Buckingham Innovation and Enterprise Unit.
The success of crowdfunding from the Laptops for Learners initiative has already gifted 22 laptops to four Buckingham schools and is now aiming to raise £5,000 to provide another 20 refurbished laptops to other local neighbouring schools.
Chair of Cloudy Foundation, David Hall, had this to say about coordinating the “Donate 2 Educate” and “Laptops for Learners” campaigns:
“We’re delighted to work together with the University of Buckingham’s Buckingham Innovation and Enterprise Unit on this worthy cause. Our two campaigns complement each other to help us reach more children across north Buckinghamshire who don’t have access to a device for online learning during these difficult times. Thanks to our partners, and the help of local businesses and households, together our community is supporting the recycling of old laptops and PCs that have the potential to rescue a child’s education and protect the environment in the process. Working with our partners, we are aiming to double our original ambition, and get 100 devices gifted to local children in need of them.”
The collaboration of these charities, businesses and educational partners working together, aims to maximise the impact of the joint initiative to ensure that as many young people as possible in our community have access to the technology they urgently need to be able to study effectively from home during lockdown, and that also keeps old computing devices from going to landfill.
Milton Keynes-based charity, Brain Tumour Research, was one of the first organisations to respond to the appeal to donate old laptops to the cause.
Ashley Bailey, director of finance and operations at Brain Tumour Research, said:
“We were delighted to be able to help another local business by donating nine laptops recently for recycling in this commendable way to help youngsters in need across our region.”
Laptops and PCs are being allocated to partnering schools and Transitions UK on a needs basis, but individuals can also make personal requests via Cloudy Foundation.
Whilst Cloudy Foundation and the University of Buckingham are appealing to businesses and residents of north Buckinghamshire to either give money or devices to the campaign, they are also appealing for more IT and technology providers to join them to help with the laptop and PC refurbishment work as well.
Help give a local child access to the technology they need to do their schoolwork from home, visit cloudyfoundation.co.uk/projects/donate2educate/ to donate, volunteer or apply for computing equipment.
