 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Melb PC Computers Bring Hope to the Third World Ray Beatty |
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In a hot dusty village in southern India life is pretty primitive and incomes are meagre if there is any income at all. Education is hard to come by and much prized as a way out of the poverty prison. Even basic reading and writing can make the difference between life and death for a subsistence farmer in a drought-stricken land.
Nine years ago Xavier Selvam was the ten-year-old son of landless labourers, living in a small village in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He was allocated to me when I volunteered to "adopt" a third-world child to receive my monthly donations to CCF, a children's charity.
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I'm sure many of you have also adopted a child in some part of
the world. The amount of money sent is small and painless and in return, for years I received periodic school
reports and photographs of this bright boy with the stiff firing squad pose and spotless, carefully ironed
shirt and shorts. My donations ensured that he would learn to read and write, receive basic nutrition, and
learn other skills which would eventually enable him to find work so he could strive to higher economic
levels than his labouring father. Each year's photograph showed a taller, stronger, brighter boy. The school reports indicated that he was intelligent and hard-working, and the translated letters I received from time to time assured me that every day he went home and helped his family with work and chores. But where was his education headed? Would that be limited by the meagre resources of the village classroom? Would he end up in the field like his father, but even more dissatisfied because he was half-educated and knew what was missing in his life? |
Silicon Valley Vindaloo
| Ironically just a hundred kilometres or so up the road from his
village is the city of Bangalore. It is a modern, busy metropolis which also happens to be one of India's
major computer centres. In fact Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India, which supplies software and
technical expertise to the world. Now if only Xavier could make the short journey of a hundred kilometres and
a thousand years.... It came to my mind that an obvious answer would be to give these children computer skills, to give them a chance to raise themselves into the technology of the new era. One day the light went on, the thoughts crossed paths with my knowledge of Melb PC and its 10,000 members. Surely between us there must be hundreds of old computers, printers and superseded software which, while it looks old hat to us, would be a technological sensation in Xavier's village. |
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And the technical skill within our group must be immense - every level of
knowledge and expertise. Couldn't we make use of our strengths in areas beyond just talking computers?
Couldn't we make some difference in the world?
To test the waters I wrote a small piece in November PC Update. The response was terrific. For weeks I
received offers of computers, printers, software, from all over this city. I was asked about the idea on a
late night interview on Radio National. Now I started getting offers from Perth, Sydney, all over. Help!
What do I do now?
I invented the name ComputerAid and approached the 20 or so Melb PC members who had contacted me from the
article. Immediately they responded positively - yes, they liked the idea, yes, they were willing to work on
old computers. But where would we find a workshop or garage? And how many computers? And where will they come
from?
Early in the piece I had made contact with Chris Bockisch of World Vision. Would they be interested in
computers? Absolutely! In fact he was already working on this with a group called RecruitNet. Why didn't I
speak with them?
Serendipity Strikes
Talk about serendipity! Just the week before RecruitNet had moved into an old factory in Campbell Street,
Collingwood. They were in the process of fitting it out as a collection centre and repair shop for old
computers. Here was more room and facilities than we ever dreamed of!
RecruitNet participates in the Work for the Dole scheme and so receives government funding. In turn it has to
train a steady procession of young people looking for skills to get them off the dole. A bunch of older folk
with technical skills, who would be willing to interact with the youngsters, would be ideal. From my very
first meeting the RecruitNet people - from Sue Campbell the chairperson, to Matt Scott and Ian Lambert and
their dedicated team - welcomed the idea with open arms.
If the idea is good, the good people will appear. When I asked Jay Boag if he would be interested in taking
part he immediately agreed. By the way, what did you do before you retired Jay? I was a company secretary.
How would you like to be our administrator? Sure. In the space of a phone conversation the group had an
experienced administrator.
It was that easy with everyone I talked to and before long we had an all-star team like Tom Coleman, Michael
Mullerworth, John Wilson, Paul Addis - the list keeps growing.
Members At Work
Meanwhile, back at the factory - for the past four months we have been getting settled in and down to work.
Currently Melb PC members are going in on Monday and Friday, an average of 10 a day. Some stay for a couple
of hours, but most work a fairly solid day.
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Mind you they stay so long because they are happy as pigs in mud -
surrounded by mountains of computers and crates of boards, hard disks, monitors and cables. The game is to
make the machines work, and test them thoroughly for reliability. Then strip the existing software (so that
we don't get into trouble with Mr Gates) and install shareware like Linux and Star Office . Once a computer
is pronounced sound it gets the Melb PC seal of approval and is packed in a box ready for shipping to the
third world.
Of course nothing is ever so simple. They need a steady supply of machines to work on. That 386 which has
sat in your shed for five years is not a suitable candidate. It may as well go into your rubbish bin as ours.
We are looking for high-end 486s or Pentiums.
Monitors that don't work are no use - they are too dangerous to fiddle with. Printers thrown out because the
parts are no longer available are not much good either unless they are very common ones where perhaps we can
cannibalise other machines.
What would be great is this: if you are associated with a company which periodically updates its computers
(that is, every company) - talk to them about donating the redundant machines to ComputerAid.
Written Off Machines
The machines would have already been written off the books through depreciation, and their accountants would
probably be able to get some tax benefits as tax donations. I know most companies offer the computers to
their employees first - but after a time there are very few employees who want yet another computer. And
selling them second-hand is too much work for a miserly return.
We now have about 30 names on our ComputerAid team, with around 20 regularly participating. For the past
couple of months they have spent the time learning - developing test techniques, learning how to recognise
the potentially good machine from the probable dud, getting to know the parts and boards and chips in the
factory.
World Vision needed time to contact its field offices and assess what was required. The responses slowly
trickled in. Fifty machines have so far been shipped, in line with what was wanted. But now the rate of
requests has picked up. Sri Lanka wants 100, Romania 170, Lebanon 200, and 20 have just been sent to
Malawi.
We know that Tanzania, Chad, Albania, Congo, Ghana and even Mongolia are putting together requests. Our
cottage industry is going to have to turn into a factory, fast. Now the meetings are about streamlining the
procedures: donations coming in, our Melb PC teams working on the machines, World Vision shipping them
out.
Melb PC Initiative
The people at World Vision have now told us that our initiative has made them think more closely about the
value of computers to their clients. The big split in the 21st Century is going to be the ever-widening gap
between the knowledge rich and the knowledge poor. Western technology is racing ahead ever quicker, yet most
third-world countries are not even on the starting blocks.
The key is technical education - and it can't happen without the computers to learn on. World Vision
observes that while our pached-up computers are well behind the state of the art, they are well ahead of
nothing. A school with a room full of 486s has the ability to teach students word processing, spreadsheets,
mathematical calculations, chemistry and engineering.
We can already see that educational progress is what increases a country's wealth, eliminates hunger,
reduces population rates. We are sharing this planet with those billions to our north and if this ship sinks,
we drown with them. It's not a matter of choice, it's a necessity for any thinking person to make some
contribution.
Your Contribution
So can you contribute? As I said, the '386 can continue to grow the petunias but any working computers,
printers, scanners, modems and the like which have not yet reached death's knock could find a home. Even
better, if you can approach your current or previous firm on the redundancy policy, that would be great.
And finally, there's your talents. You don't have to be a computer engineer, though if you have some
experience in assembling computers or installing software that will help. Everyone needs some training so
don't feel you'll be a dunce. Just recently the group organised a training session led by our own teaching
wizard, Tom Coleman, and 17 attended. As it grows, we hope to do more of this self-education.
Also we have offered to show the RecruitNet trainees some basic skills, perhaps mentor them and
certainly have them help our people on the workbenches. So we will be helping our own disadvantaged as well
as those overseas.
What To Do
If you'd like to participate, drop an e-mail to Jay Boag (jayboag@melbpc.org.au) or come to a session to suss
it out. Just a visit initially, until the team works out how you can help. They work from 10 am to 5 pm on
Mondays, and we have just opened Fridays too. The address is RecruitNet, 114 Campbell Street, Collingwood
(off Johnston Street).
Back in India, Xavier is now 18 years old, studying at college to be a maths teacher. Whatever happens, my
little contribution has changed a person's life completely. Once they also have computers available to the
children and community centres, the benefits will be huge and even more youngsters will face the modern world
with an even chance.
About the Author
Ray Beatty has been a Melb PC member since 1986 (number 772) and is best known as the Monthly Meeting
Convener who organises the group's monthly meetings - and has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars
worth of prizes in the popular raffles. He has been a Melb PC Committee Member for three year.
Photos: Paul Addis and Dave O'Brien.
Reprinted from the June 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group,
Australia
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