By Vishani Ragobeer

LOCAL ‘tech’ minds have joined hands to fix old computers so that more pupils and students can have these devices to attend their classes virtually, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aggrey Marsh, a Computer Science student, told the Guyana Chronicle that he was cognisant of the digital divide in Guyana and how many children would be disproportionately affected due to physical closure of schools to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

He thought of sourcing donations and contributions to order laptops for children without electronic devices, but that was not feasible.

“So, the next best thing was to do what I really know — which is fix old computers — and give it to people,” Marsh said. That was how the project, called “Computers for Guyana” started.

With the idea in mind, and an innate desire to see more persons able to attend classes, Marsh said he connected with his ‘techies’ to find a space to work, to build a website and well, to help him fix the old computers persons donated when they heard about what he was doing. Even students of the University of Guyana (UG) would help him from time to time.

Nicolas Stephney has been Aggrey’s partner in the endeavour. This young man related that helping on this project sometimes enveloped him in nostalgia, because some of the computers donated were from the 2000s. They are all fully functional, but some may need keyboards, monitors and/or mouses.

“The motherboards have to be completely replaced, and the hard drives. Also require some more power supplies,” Nicolas said, explaining what the duo have been dealing with. The goal, he said, was to donate 50 computers or electronic devices by the end of October. So far, their output has been 11, inclusive of two tablets given by a private donor who pledged 10 tablets in total.

WILLINGNESS

Aggrey also mentioned that few other persons, from as far as Atlanta and New York in the US, have indicated their willingness to donate their old computers to the duo to ‘fix up’.

All of the requests for the computers come through the Facebook page (Computers for Guyana) created for this project. When requests are made, applicants are asked to provide information on what grade they are in. This is important because computers are given on a ‘First Come, First Serve’ basis, but, priority is given to pupils in Grade Six, preparing to write the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) and students in Fifth Form, who will be sitting the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

“Others asking whether Grade Five students could be assisted and it is hard to tell people we are currently not providing assistance to those students,” Nicolas said. “Hopefully, maybe when we get to complete what our main goal is we can provide assistance to those other persons.”

Beyond that, the ‘Computers for Guyana’ project is also focusing on providing Internet to students because, as Aggrey related, it is a disservice to provide pupils and students with these devices when they do not have access to the Internet to use them to attend classes or do their schoolwork.

They will also attempt to train teachers on how to take control of the Zoom platform, for their classes, following a popular post which circulated on Facebook showing students making fun of a teacher for not being able to effectively use the platform.

More information on the work being done by Aggrey, Nicolas and Team can be found on the website: http://computersforguyana.org/. They are accepting donations of old computers, tablets and even monetary donations. Aggrey also mentioned that persons can donate using bitcoin.