Mid-summer update
The continuing war in Ukraine and other global impacts have brought about massive increases in fuel and energy prices, not to mention widespread inflation across all of life’s essentials, creating a cost of living crisis here in the UK. This will have an inevitable impact on digital inclusion, with more families unable either to purchase devices or to afford data to use them. It is more important than ever to use surplus tech for social good, helping to mitigate some of these effects for families. As well as helping with improved life chances, access to digital provides opportunities for savings not available to the digitally excluded and it is therefore important that access be both maintained and widened.
Refugees
Here at Laptops4Learning, we have continued to be busy helping get devices out to refugee families arriving in the UK. Our partnership with Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign (CRRC) has seen over 80 more devices distributed to Ukrainian refugee families across Cambridgeshire. We very much welcome the support already given by South Cambs District Council, and now East Cambs District Council are helping appeal to companies based in their area for tech to enable CRRC to reach more refugee families. We are also talking with Huntingdon Council about how we can support them.
Meantime our work with other councils supporting refugees in bridging hotels has continued, with over 100 laptops and chromebooks, and 60 mobile phones recently shipped out.
We were delighted to hear from Compassionate Kenilworth, which has been developed from COIVID-19 Support Kenilworth, to whom we had supplied iPads during the pandemic. They now work to improve community life and enhance experiences, reduce hospital admissions, improve health outcomes and enhance the lives of those who have felt isolated, alone and unsupported. Part of this work involves helping get the children of asylum seekers into schools, and we were able to supply them with laptops for a couple of these teenagers.
Our partnership with Groundwork London has seen a further 15 laptops supplied to help their IMPACT Afghan response – these are used to teach digital skills to Afghan refugee women, helping them rebuild their lives in the UK.
Education
We are delighted that our work with Level Trust has begun again, working with Jennie White, their new CEO. This follows on from our previous work with them delivering over 650 devices to help children in Luton and Bedfordshire with their education during the pandemic. Our new collaboration has started with almost 200 devices going out through Level Trust in July to Lea Manor High School and Waulud Primary School in Luton. We look forward to doing much more together moving forward.
A little further from home, we supplied provided three laptops in July to our partner KHEN Cambodia. This is a local NGO based in Battambang province, Cambodia, that works to promote child rights, access to education and protection for vulnerable children. We have previously funded two schools and a generator for their tech centre.
Disadvantaged children
We were humbled to be able to help a young family through Deykin Avenue Junior & Infant School in Birmingham. As well as being disadvantaged, they had suffered a terrible personal tragedy. We provided them with three iPads for their education and play, which seemed such a small thing in the midst of their difficult circumstances. We send them every good wish for the future.
We attended the KidsOut Question of Sport event in London in June to help support the fantastic work they do to help disadvantaged children nationally. Our partnership with KidsOut also means that we will shortly deliver 100 sustainable, refurbished laptops from business for them to distribute to the children.
Business
Our work would not be possible without the many businesses that choose to have their surplus tech made sustainable and available for social good.
We have attended networking events in Cambridge and Huntingdon to help our work in connecting businesses with local charities to address real needs in their local communities. Our TechAid UK solution is working well, and we work with several large companies across the insurance and finance sectors that are very happy to see the difference that their surplus tech is making to people’s lives, as well as being a great solution to help our environment.
We were recently given the opportunity to showcase our work to Cambridge Ahead, who are very keen both to address digital inequality in Cambridge and to make the city more sustainable.
Upcoming events
We continue on the steering group of Cambridgeshire Digital Partnership (CDP), working to promote digital inclusion across Cambridgeshire. In July we presented the Laptops4Learning solution to the CDP network event, and we look forward to the #CambsDigi Conference taking place 18-24 October 2022, marking Get Online Week with a series of events.
Before then we are taking part on 3-Sided Cube’s podcast Igniting Change on 13 September, looking at the role of technology in achieving social impact.
There is so much work to be done, and we encourage anyone in business or other organisations with surplus tech to get in touch to see how we can help you deliver social good in your local community and make your IT refresh strategy more sustainable.
Sue Gowling 15/08/22
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