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with Richard Aedy
on Saturday 14 February 2004 Computerbank Summary: Computerbank is an Australian initiative to supply free computers and training to low income individuals, community groups and disadvantaged schools. With branches throughout Australia, it is a voluntary community-based organisation that collects and then refurbishes the computers before redistrubution. As they say, it's all about solving the digital divide - one computer at a time. Transcript: Richard Aedy: A couple of weeks ago we asked you to let us know about anything you thought might be a story. Some of you did and this is the first one, it’s about an organisation called Computer Bank. Sue Clark’s with Computer Bank’s NSW President, Geoff Tregenza. Geoff Tregenza: It’s essentially a community service really but its focus is on recycling computers, making low cost computers available to disadvantaged community organisations and individuals as a way of overcoming the increasing digital divide that is apparent in our community. Sue Clark: Now it’s a voluntary organisation? Geoff Tregenza: Yes, totally voluntary and our organisation is very much dependent on the corporate sector and they are quite generous in their donations they make to us. And because we’re also very much into the Open Source software world... Sue Clark: Now what do you mean by Open Source? Geoff Tregenza: Well it’s essentially an operating system and application of software which is totally free. It’s not proprietary, it’s community owned in a large meaning of the word, and therefore when we load the operating system and the applications onto a computer we are able to give them away at a low cost and there are no ongoing or recurring costs in the hands of the recipients. Sue Clark: Right, well let’s go from the beginning and find out what happens. You get a phone call from a corporation, a company, and they say “Geoff, come and take 20 old computers off our hands.” Geoff Tregenza: A large part of my day – and I’m totally a volunteer – but a large part of my day is responding to phone calls from individuals, retired gentlemen, little old ladies in the best meaning of that word, ringing up and saying ‘I’ve got an old computer here, I don’t know what to do with it. Would you like it?’ To companies that we either receive out of the blue phone calls, or even we have an ongoing relationship with companies where we’re getting hundreds of computers donated a year. And in fact, in one particular instance that in NSW we’re working with at the moment, is one particular corporate donation who’s offering us over a period of 12 months 5700 computers, including something like 500 laptops. Sue Clark: And are these computers working, are they broken, why are they giving them to you? Geoff Tregenza: Well most of the corporate stuff does work, a lot of the individual donations given to us by people in the community maybe don’t work. But what we can do with the broken stuff of course is break it all up and take bits out of it, cannibalise the items and put those into machines that help make them work. The large corporate ones that work they’re, in the IT vernacular, we’re certainly receiving Pentium 2s and Pentium 3s and above even. What we do with them is totally wipe all the data and then renovate the system, make sure the component parts work and load them with this Linux operating system and applications that are appropriate to the potential recipients. Sue Clark: And then how are they distributed from there and in fact who is eligible to receive these computers? Geoff Tregenza: Well I should put this in the context of the national organisation. Computer Bank started about ten years ago in Victoria, it was a Victorian initiative. The various branches if you like of Computer Bank around Australia (and I might mention that in passing Computer Bank in Western Australia is called Computer Angels), each of the branches have their own general approach to it but overall our global effort if you like is to overcome the digital divide among the disadvantaged. Now those disadvantaged individuals may be retired people, people who are unemployed, people who have a locational disadvantage and many community organisations who basically run on the smell of an oily rag. We can offer them a computer for free, we can set up a network for them, we can give them application software, they don’t have any ongoing licence charges. I can talk briefly about the Hunter in particular, and that’s where I’m located, some of our recent donations have been in terms of networks to Jesmond Neighbourhood Centre, Belmont Neighbourhood Centre, to Lake Macquarie and Newcastle PCYC. Now we’ve also had a request in the last couple of days as a matter of fact with a local community renewal project which is being sponsored itself by the NSW Government to well they talked about upward of 1500 computers to distribute around in a particular disadvantaged community. The notion being one computer in every household in this particular community. Now that’s a large call, we’re pretty confident we can supply that volume of computers but that size of transport, logistics, donation is a major cost to us. We basically run the thing out of our own pockets and just the cost of hiring a truck and storing them temporarily, having a workshop where we can do this volume of material, is quite a large financial issue. Sue Clark: So do you need volunteers that can do publicity, fund-raising as well as computer literate volunteers? Geoff Tregenza: Certainly we need people with financial skills, with people management skills, with promotional skills, with driving skills, with making-cups-of-tea skills, with training skills and all those things that make up a totality of an organisation. Sue Clark: And have you had any letters or phone calls from people that you’ve distributed your computers to that they have now become computer literate and crossed the digital divide? Geoff Tregenza: Indeed, we have those letters of thanks and phone calls and the word of mouth of course in a local community. We also have letters of complaints I might add and that’s particularly why those people who put their hand up and said ‘we’d like a computer, how can we get one?’ And we’re unable to deal with them very time efficiently at all. So I apologise to all those folks out there who’ve said ‘I’m one of them’, all I can say is keep on our hammer, get in touch with us again and we apologise, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Sue Clark: Geoff Tregenza thank you so much for joining us on The Buzz. Geoff Tregenza: You’re most welcome, sir. Richard Aedy: Sir? Geoff needs his eyes testing I reckon. Geoff Tregenza with Mr Sue Clark. Guests:
Further information:
Sue Clark Story Index |
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