Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 27, 2002|Volume 31, Number 4

Donations of computers can help
bring India into 'Information Age'

Yale's Recycling Office and the Yale chapter of Asha for Education will celebrate Gandhi Day on Saturday, Oct. 5, with a community event designed to bring information technology to a rural area in India.

That day, in cooperation with Digital Partners, Pitney Bowes and the Connecticut office of World Computer Exchange, Yale Recycling and Asha will take individual and corporate donations of computers, monitors and printers from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. The goal of the public event is to fill a 40-foot container with some 375 working computer sets and monitors and provide them to over 100 village centers in the state of Gujarat in India. Gujarat was the area that suffered a massive earthquake in January, 2001.

"Yale Recycling is pleased to join other organizations in the effort to supply developing communities with tools of the Information Age," says C.J. May, Yale's coordinator of recycling.

The event is being held in association with the 250,000-member Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), an international organization of self-employed women workers who earn their living through their own work or through small businesses.

Influenced by Gandhian principles on bringing about social change in a peaceful and cooperative manner, SEWA also helps organize women workers to achieve the goal of employment and self-reliance. SEWA members will use the donated computers to improve communication within SEWA, to access information and markets, to provide vocational computer training of SEWA members and to teach computer skills to children in government schools.

Individuals or corporate volunteers are invited to donate working 486 and Pentium PC computers that are at last 50 MHz, working color monitors and working printers, especially dot matrix printers. Individuals or companies that need help getting their donated computers to New Haven should contact Hitten Zaveri at (203) 737-5407.

Volunteers are also sought to sign up for a four-hour shift on Saturday to give receipts, test the equipment, bubble wrap the monitors and printers, as well as sort, count and pack the keyboards, mice, power cords, software and networking gear into the 40-foot shipping container. Those interested in volunteering can sign up at www.ashanet.org/yale.

Asha for Education is a volunteer, apolitical and secular action group dedicated to basic education for underprivileged children in India.

World Computer Exchange regularly ships containers of computers to Africa, Asia and Latin America to connect poor youth to the internet. Digital Partners provided a grant of $30,000 to SEWA to cover shipping costs and other fees.

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