As a member of the Chamber of Commerce us at Solutions 4 IT have offered to support another of our members, free@last, in their work of helping disadvantaged children and young people to overcome the challenges that they face, by donating 21 reconditioned Lenovo laptops to them.
Here at Solutions4IT, we provide a full range of IT support and solutions to businesses and the Third Sector. We have developed great relationships with free@last during our time at the Birmingham BNI network group. Through this relationship, the challenges faced by children who fell behind during the lockdown, simply because they could not access their schoolwork, came to light.
Dan Parker, Our Account Manager says:
‘As one of our clients have just replaced their leased machines, the team at S4IT, knew they had to play their part in being socially responsible, and agreed to donate the equipment to free@last, rather than sell them on eBay! It’s the best decision we’ve made in ages, we make sure all spare equipment is put to good use’
free@last has been supporting the children, young people and families in the inner city of Birmingham for over 21 years, and are constantly reminded of the struggles they face when enabling and equipping local people to overcome their challenges. Most of the time it is like putting plasters on catastrophic bleeds, and then trying to treat the physical trauma without the resources to be effective or treat the mental trauma too.
With the passion to resolve this plaster problem once and for all they have created a strategic approach to eradicating child poverty in their community. As part of the poverty strategy, and through the challenges of Covid-19 lockdowns, we know that digital poverty is more than just having a laptop (per child) to access home learning, it’s a severe lack of access and awareness to modern day technology, such as AR, VR, AI, Holographic Imagery, Cloud deployments, Edge devices, future-adaptive technologic architecting, Mirrored twins and so much more. Disadvantaged communities have struggled to educate their children because families do not have the technology, the connectivity, or the know-how to make it work, so the last 12 months has seen the neediest children fall even further behind, and the gap between affluent and poor become even greater.
John Street, founder and director of free@last says:
‘We are SO far behind the technological revolution, but the question is why should those in the most disadvantaged communities not be a part of the digital solution for our children’s success? We need to focus on bringing the WOW of technology to our children and companies like Solutions 4 IT are instrumental in helping us to help the children we serve.’
If you would like to be part of the solution too, get in touch with Solutions 4 IT or free@last.
