There remains to be a large need for computers and laptops for students, those shielding and many others in need. Local charities and community groups have responded to this. They are doing a great job at collecting donations, updating and fixing laptops and distributing them to those in need of a working device.
We’d like to collect information about these initiatives and curate a list on our website. With this, we hope to give the projects more visibility and encourage more people to donate their old devices or get involved fixing them. We are particularly looking for small or community initiatives - those that take donations from individuals!
For this, we need your help! Do you know of local initiatives that reuse computers and laptops? Is your Restart group or Repair Cafe even running such a project themselves? Let us know!
Thanks Angel, we’d like to focus on local initiatives, because they are most accountable to the beneficiaries and most likely to benefit from volunteers and donations from our network. Also the need is great here now and it’s a good way of raising awareness about waste and inequality.
There is the Mildmay Refurbishment Hub in London
You can see more info at https://mer-it.org
It is what is called here Computer Aid Islington.
They are still taking donations and from September, they will be running free computer repair workshops for the community.
In London, there’s also @Tom_Kenny who was asking about setting up something similar as part of the Kensington & Chelsea mutual aid group here:
Are we focusing on the UK or hoping to map initiatives outside the UK too?
If so, @Datam at Repair Café Gent has been working on a laptop reuse project here. And I think @Manu_RepairTogether might have more info on initiatives in Wallonia
Here you can find the overview of all community initiatives that take laptop donations.
On the page, you’ll also find a form with which you can suggest a project to be listed.
Please share this with your communities! We’d like to spread the word on donation options and list as many projects as possible
hi guys,
sorry for the delay, i have been busy with my illness, as a repair cafe gent we repair more than 1000 laptop and donate it back to people who need a computer in covid time.
wish u all the best
be safe
Datam
Hi @Datam hope you are getting better from your illness. Thanks for sharing, that’s a truly remarkable number of computers. We recently read that friends in Glasgow’s Remade Network (probably some overlap with @Repair_Cafe_Glasgow) refurbished and distributed 500 computers. Here in London we’ve probably only done a couple dozen together with Hackney Fixers, but we’re looking to do more next year.
Wonder what other amazing work we don’t even know about has happened!
@Janet we change a lot due to covid time, we tried to adopt to the situation
A- we did program a dropoff center that people bring the damaged items and get it back when it fixed by volunteers
B- organizing a lot of online events to supporting the right to repair movement
C- we fixed donated laptop desktop smartphone and tablets, and donate them back to the students or people that lost their contact to the world due to covid and social distancing
D- organizing the education event via zoom to teach others to how to repair and fixing computers and smartphones.
it is fun, we did our best in time of covid, and we looking forward to doing more
we having weekly meetings and looking for any other way that we can be helpful and planning for the time when all the system back to the normal way.
wish you all the best.
regarding my illness thank you for your wishes, I can say that I am a fighter and cancer can not beat me this easily.
Just mentioning that we are part of an effort, together with @Mercedes and Digital Access West Yorkshire (who are really connected to Repair Cafe Leeds @Alistair_Brown) to network organisations refurbishing laptops nationally across the UK. Many/most are our list.
Our second online meetup happens on 25th February. We’ll be discussing our shared values and motivations, as well as getting into bottlenecks to refurbishing more laptops as the need is so great.
We’d encourage anybody engaged in reuse @Anne_Carlos@Repair_Cafe_Glasgow or interested in helping their own local reuse initiative to join
We’re doing a survey on local computer reuse projects in the UK to learn how they are getting on and what support they might need in future.
The Restart Project and Digital Access West Yorkshire are conducting this research with Nominet’s support, and the findings will contribute to their future strategy, including the future of their Reboot website.
This survey is aimed at people who founded projects to collect and redistribute computers in their local communities . If a founder can’t be found, we’d still love responses from anybody who knows a little bit of the back story.
It should take only about 10 minutes, and we’ve set a deadline of next Friday, 23rd July .
The overall results will be made public, but responses will all be anonymous.
This research can make big difference in future funding and support for this essential work at the grassroots. We know the digital divide has not gone away in the UK, and access to computers continues to be a real issue for many families and individuals.
Let us know!
