Mandela Day may be over but East London-based tech whizz John Goodrich’s efforts to help Unathi High School continue.
As previously reported by the GO! & Express, 2019 Local Hero Goodrich partnered with the Daily Dispatch and Johnson & Johnson to refurbish old computers to assist Unathi matric pupils.
“The Daily Dispatch gave 21 machines, and I managed to salvage 11 of them,” Goodrich said.
However, he admitted that donations from members of the public and local business had not been as forthcoming as he had initially hoped, which had affected the project.
“I don’t want to get started again unless I’ve got quite a bit that I can at least prepare, say another 10 or so machines,” he said.
Goodrich is now hoping to donate at least 20 computers to Unathi High School, and is appealing for more donations of old machines.
He said the computers should preferably be Windows 7 or newer.
But while he’s still working to help Unathi High School, Goodrich has plans for a future project which he believes could help even more pupils.
“What I want to try and get off the ground is I want to gather, say, 20 laptops.
“Then I’ll sort them, load them and then if we could find a vehicle somewhere, we could make them available to more schools,” he said.
Goodrich’s plan is to make the laptops available to local schools on a rotational basis.
For example, one school would use them on a Monday morning, another school would use them on a Monday afternoon, and so on.
In between, the PCs would remain with Goodrich, who would also arrange for the transport.
“Also, I’m hoping we can find a sponsor because I’m going to have to employ somebody to be in charge of the vehicle and transport the computers.
“I’ve got a lot of students who I’ve trained already that would be willing to come in if they could earn a bit of a living doing it,” he said.
As an added bonus, Goodrich said he would also load a specially-made International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) program which he designed himself.
“It took me a long time to develop that, about six months,” Goodrich said.
ICDL is an internationally-recognised computer literacy certificate, run by the ICDL Foundation.
To make this programme work, Goodrich said he required donations of laptops, preferably Windows 7 or newer.
He is also appealing to local businesses to come on board and donate any old equipment they no longer use.
Contact Goodrich on 072-140-1941 (his phone was recently stolen and the model he is using currently is not a smartphone, so all previous WhatsApp communications have been lost).
If you contacted him via WhatsApp, please phone or SMS him.
