Team from Rural Rutherford County to Visit Durham’s Kramden Institute Saturday to Learn How to Refurbish Computers for Kids in Need
Tuesday, 05 May 2009 11:46
Carolina Newswire 05-01-2009
Kramden Institute will tutor the Rutherford team in Kramden’s signature Geek-A-Thon process and during the day 30 PCs will be refurbished to bring back to the less-fortunate kids of Rutherford County.
Research Triangle Park, NC – Kramden Institute, Inc. will host a group of volunteers from rural Rutherford County, over three hours west of RTP, on Saturday, May 2, 2009 from 9AM until 4PM. Kramden Institute’s technical team of volunteers will guide the team of 12 Rutherford volunteers and train them in Kramden’s refurbishing process. The group expects to complete 30 PCs and bring them back to Rutherfordton to donate to local students whose families don’t have computers at home. After being trained in Kramden’s signature Geek-A-Thon® process, the Rutherford County group will be able to refurbish additional PCs for their local kids in the future. This event is a partnership between Kramden Institute, the 6 year old RTP non-profit that has already put PCs in some 3,600 homes of less-fortunate school kids, Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center, Inc., a Rutherford County e-NC non-profit organization, the Rutherford County IT Professionals Association, and TrailBlazer Company. The project has been in the planning stages for two months.
Bringing PCs into these homes often brings the whole family online for the first time - a good fit with the Foothills Connect Internet-based economic development mission.
“Kramden Institute has helped kids in 32 North Carolina counties already,” said David Moore, Kramden’s volunteer Director of Development, “but we have been looking to train others in our process so they can help kids in their communities most directly. This project is our first sojourn into training other communities, and the Rutherford County group, from a very rural and less developed area 200 miles to our west, is a great test of our system. This first step is to train the volunteers in our process. The second is to have them be able to replicate the process locally and keep on helping their kids.”
Partnering with Kramden Institute (www.kramden.org) is Omer Causey, CEO of TrailBlazer Company (www.trailblazerco.com), who has made the arrangements and headed planning efforts for Rutherford County. “These computers are necessary tools for kids’ education and we have a great need to put PCs in more homes,” said Causey. “The Kramden Institute has perfected the refurbishing process to get computers to kids and is a natural partner with us for this process.” Causey has raised funds locally to help defray some of Kramden’s costs. “Beyond this fun day of computer refurbishing, we look forward to setting up our own technology days to refurbish more PCs. We are also working with local schools to identify the students who work hard in school but do not have computers in their homes. Foothills Connect, a group that is working to bring Internet connectivity to Western Carolina communities, has joined in the project as well.”
“Kramden Institute was founded to put PCs into the homes of K through 12 school kids who work hard at school but do not have a PC in their home,” said Mark D. Dibner, who co-founded Kramden Institute with his son Ned, and serves as Kramden’s volunteer Executive Director. “Just imagine if you didn’t have a computer to use for the last five years….or the last five days for that matter. Kids without computers are at a huge disadvantage and we applaud the Rutherford group for leading the way to bring their kids PCs. We hope this is only the first of many communities to train with us and bring our Geek-A-Thon® process home with them. Our ultimate goal is to train communities throughout the state then throughout the United States to bring together their surplus computers, their local techies and some modest funds, and build computers for their local kids, just like Habitat for Humanities builds homes for local less-fortunate families. The only thing holding us back is funding.”
Kramden Institute is thankful for groups like LabCorp, Lenovo, CISCO and Intel, who have donated equipment, volunteers and funding to get it started. The group has only two full-time paid employees—otherwise it is volunteer-run and driven with over 1,700 volunteers having served Kramden in various capacities since its inception in 2003. As a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, Kramden Institute is dependent on donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 05 May 2009 11:49 )
