Creighton Prep teacher Luke Hansen, right, and Prep students take a break from packaging monitors for Computers 4 Africa.
Sarah Lanspa, left, and Liz Peters, students at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart in Omaha, remove 120 Volt plugs from donated computers.
Students and couple assist African schools by providing computers By LISA MAXSON Catholic Voice
Thanks to a couple in Omaha and several young volunteers, children in Africa are using computers to improve their future.
Computers 4 Africa (CFA), a non-profit program headquartered in Omaha, refurbishes computers and creates ready-to-set-up computer labs for Africa. Founded in 2002 by Tim and Ruth Leacock, CFA works to promote sustainable Information and Communications Technology (ICT) development in rural African communities.
The program's approach is to send quality hardware, educate for sustainability, maximize positive impact and strengthen community relationships, Ruth Leacock said.
Students at Creighton Prep, Marian and Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, all in Omaha, do the refurbishing and help the Leacocks package the computers to send overseas.
Only a handful of students from each school volunteer, Ruth Leacock said, but they get the job done.
"These few students are providing all these computers for 26 communities and jumpstart all these communities into ICT development," she said. "It's really a major impact by so few students. We wish we had more Catholic schools doing this."
The Leacocks started the program after having lunch with a Jesuit friend who had served as a missionary priest in Africa. Tim Leacock's employer at the time - Union Pacific Railroad - was changing out their computers and he didn't want them to go to waste. His priest friend suggested he send them to Africa. That launched the first experimental project to see if they could get computers to Africa, Ruth Leacock said.
"That first project was very costly in the beginning and we made quite a few mistakes, but it was a great learning experience," she said.
But why send the computers to Africa and not some other poor country?
Ruth Leacock said it's because Northern Uganda is slowly recovering from 20 years of war. Schools and other non-profits there require assistance to rebuild and reconnect with the rest of the world, she said.
"It took a huge amount of American resources to create equipment that is going to an early grave," she said. "It costs very little to refurbish this technology which can empower the poor."
Going extra mile
Last weekend students prepared 360 computers - 26 networked labs in a 40-foot shipping container - for shipment to Kampala, Uganda. The 12-ton shipment was CFA's largest to date.
Once the computers arrive, they must go through customs before being transported to the computer lab site, Ruth Leacock said. Then a Ugandan colleague with Computers 4 Africa will go on site and work with a group of schools on how to set up their computer labs. The colleague will return one to two months later and lead the computer teachers in a two-week study on computer maintenance and repair. And two months after that, he will help the teachers get connected to the Internet.
"We did a lot of research to find out what was the easiest, most sustainable, least expensive way to get the classroom hooked up to the Internet," Ruth Leacock said, noting that their last step is to possibly help them create their own Web site.
CFA labs come with tested, same-model computers, each with a loaded operating system, applications and network capability. All the computers are the same model to make maintenance and repair easier and to provide a built-in supply of replacement parts as the computers break down, Ruth Leacock said.
The PCs are later-model computers that come with a MS Windows 2000 Pro software license.
It costs about $250 to create a 10-computer lab, Ruth Leacock said. Beneficiaries pay $75 per computer, which covers international shipping and about 50 percent of the cost of follow-up programming, she said.
School involvement
At Creighton Prep, students work on the computers after school. They take the computers apart, clean them, and put them back together. They replace missing components, remove extra ones and make sure the computers have enough memory. They also wipe the hard drives clean and install MS Windows 2000 on the machines.
"The guys really do everything. They do the whole process," said Sean Joyce Whipp, a theology teacher at Prep who helps coordinate the program. "Some guys start off not knowing anything and they sort of learn as they go and the other guys will teach them. And some guys show up knowing really everything and we don't have to do very much with those guys."
Joyce Whipp, who coordinates the program with Elaine Ayers, said that although the school would like to accept every computer presented to them, they can't.
"Oftentimes what happens is that someone will want to donate a computer that is eight years old and doesn't work anymore. It's really a burden for us to get a computer like that because then we end up having to pay to recycle the components that are inside. We don't just throw them away in the dumpster," he said.
The schools, however, are in need of computer monitors, Joyce Whipp said. Companies and schools often replace their computers, but very infrequently do they replace all the monitors that they have unless they're broken, he said.
Marian sophomores, juniors and seniors not only spend their free periods refurbishing the computers, but also packing them up. The school holds work days throughout the year for students to pack the pieces that have to go with the computers, like the keyboards, said Kathi Smith, Marian's program coordinator. So far this year students have cleaned more than 134 keyboards and hope to get at least 20 computers repaired, she said.
"I think it's a really good skill for the girls to have - to be able to open a box and take parts out and put parts in and it still works. They can do that and it's really a great confidence builder for them," she said.
Jim Kult, a sophomore at Creighton University, is a 2005 graduate of Creighton Prep who helped with the Computers 4 Africa program. He also traveled with the school to Africa to see how the computers were being used.
"I was overwhelmed by the generosity and gratefulness of the Ugandans who received the computers. It was satisfying to finally see that the hard work that myself and many others had put into restoring the computers was benefiting others who have so little," Kult told the Catholic Voice.
He said the experience helped him see life differently and affected his faith.
"I have privileges and opportunities that very few people in the world are given and Uganda could not have made that any clearer," Kult said. "But with those privileges also comes the responsibility to share my experiences with others. I have learned to do the best I can, especially in school, in order to become a competent and knowledgeable professional with the ability to affect change within my lifetime."
