BC Digital Divide – Bridging the computer literacy chasm
Everybody who reads my blog may know by now that my laptop is pretty much defunct. The screen goes black at the worst times and I just can’t cope with it anymore. So I was looking for an inexpensive laptop and came across BC Digital Divide.
“BC Digital Divide is a volunteer organization that works strictly with donated computers. As such, we can only give out what is provided to us. But wherever possible, we try to provide the style of computer the recipient is hoping for.” [BC Digital Divide]
While I am definitely not eligible for their program (simply because I can actually buy a laptop with some smart budgeting and money management) I was very impressed by what they are doing. It’s a great charity and I’d definitely recommend to our resident Vancouver geeks to check it out.
Related posts:
- How useful is a tablet computer?
- The Parade of Lost Souls and a Digital Shrine
- Digital media content creation – impromptu meetups :) – NDMD ’08
- Digital media and sustainability: Friends or foes? – NDMD ’08
- Digital media and sustainability: Friends or foes? – NDMD ’08
BC Digital Divide is the first nonprofit who supported my work teaching blogging on the DTES. They gave me my first laptop so I could move around and teach at different venues. It’s not too much to say that, if not for them, I’d be doing something very different, and probably not as helpful to the community.
Now that I, too, am prosperous enough to have bought a laptop, the laptop they gave me will be used by the marginalized people of the DTES to use the power of the digital revolution for empowerment. They can at last get in on the global conversation.
Have you tried a Mac
Don’t forget Free Geek (http://freegeekvancouver.org/) in East Van. They focus on several things:
– ethical & environmentally responsible e-waste recycling
– promotion of open source & free software
– provision of free or low-cost computers & training to the community
What all that means is that they’ll take your unwanted computer equipment off you. Volunteers (of which I am one) will disassemble it and rebuild the better pieces into new computers. They’ll then make sure that the items that can’t be reused don’t end up being pulled apart in a village in China. They’ll install free software (Ubuntu Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin etc) onto the rebuilt computers and donate them to other non-profits for free or sell them dirt cheap to people who maybe can’t afford to buy a new computer. Many of the volunteers arrive with no computer knowledge., learn lots while there then, after 24 hours of volunteer work, are given a free computer to take home and free training course on how to use it.
It’s great to have places like Free Geek and BC Digital Divide in our community.