Ford India donated 175 used laptops to Asha Chennai to be used for our charitable activities. We distributed these laptops to over 70 schools and centres.

See photos from the laptop distribution here.

Asha was sending computer teachers to over 100 schools even at the beginning of this academic year. With support from Amazon we are in the process of expanding it to 150 schools. Thanks to the 2 year closure due to Covid, many of the computers in the schools are under repair and quite a few of them need to be condemned. Many of the new schools that we have started supporting did not have any computers. Even those that did needed these to be serviced and also needed more computers beyond what they had.

We approached several companies for donation of used computers. Ford really helped us out with a donation of 175 used laptops. We received 50 laptops from their Chennai office and 50 laptops from their Coimbatore office on 13^th and 15^th June. Later we received 75 more laptops from their Chennai office on 15^th July. This has helped us setup computers at more or less all our currently supported 130 schools. It also provided us a few extra spares that we can use when our teacher laptops need to be repaired. We were also able to equip our Rural Technology Centres and our computer centres with laptops.

The laptops were all 14” Dell laptops. They were mostly i3 with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD. Some of them were higher configuration with i5 processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. About 10 of them had problems and an additional 20 of them required replacement of their battery. We replaced batteries as required and we also distributed mouse with the laptops. Besides 10 laptops that are not working, about 5 laptops are still remaining to be distributed.

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Here are the details of the laptop distribution by project. At tbe end we have also described donations of laptops received through another NGO Disha and finally a visit by a Director of Ford to our project schools in Thiruvallur.

 

Sangamam (Thiruvallur District)

This is the largest of our projects where we support about 85 schools. While we were given 100 desktop systems by Hyundai Glovis in 2020, these were quite old (almost all of them more than 5 years old). Most of them have developed problems over the last couple of years and are not serviceable. We have also taken up about 25 new schools with funds from Amazon. We have distributed a total of 71 laptops to 44 schools. All of these schools are being serviced by our computer teachers. Here is a list of the schools.

Pearl (Thoothukudi, Thirunelveli and Thenkasi Districts)
We were supporting 10 schools which has expanded to more than 20 schools this year and many of these schools are bigger as well. Most of the continuing schools have a good number of desktop computers that we donated from the Ford computers we received in 2020. The new schools required computers and some of the old ones also required a few additional computers. We have distributed a total of 28 laptops to 15 schools. All of these schools are being serviced by our computer teachers. Here is a list of the schools.
At PUMS Kayathar (South) when we gave them the 3 laptops, they invited the local press and this got
good coverage. Here are the articles from Malai Murasu and Dhina Thandhi.

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Thulasi (Thiruvannamalai and Villupuram Districts)

We were supporting 10 schools to which we have added another 3 schools. Most of the continuing schools had some desktop computers that were donated from the Ford computers we received in 2020. The distributions this year were to top up some more computers to the continuing schools. We have distributed a total of 13 laptops to 8 schools. All of these schools are being serviced by our computer teachers. Here is a list of the schools.

• School	No of Students	Computers Assigned
  PUMS Kaatuchithambur	224	1
  PUPS Kamakaram	48	1
  PUPS Nallan pillai petral	150	1
  PUPS Nagalampattu	65	1
  PUMS Melmalayanur.	365	3
  PUPS KOLATHUR	150	2
  PUPS ,Kaniyampoondi	33	1
  PUPS Karikkalampadi	109	3
  8 schools	1144	13

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Sangamam Rajatalab (Varanasi District in Uttar Pradesh)

We are supporting 6 schools through this project. We had provided these schools with the desktop computers from Ford in 2020. Three of these schools required additional computers. We are providing 8 laptops to these three schools. All of these schools are being serviced by our computer teachers. Here is a list of the schools.

School	No of Students	Computers Assigned
Composite School Harsos	736	2
Jagatpur primary school, Varanasi	140	3
Hardattpur primary school, Varanasi	218	3
3 schools	1094	8

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• Poorna Vidhya   We are supporting 10 schools in Chennai and Chengalpet districts. Many of the schools here have been equipped in the past with donations for Form computers from Rotary. This year we have added 4 laptops to just two additional schools. These are CPS Shastrinagar and PUPS Kataankoloathur.
  

Other Centers and Schools

Asha Chennai has offices at Chennai (Mylapore), Thiruvallur (Kaivandhur), Thoothukudi (Kayathar) and Villupuram (Seeyapoondi). We wanted to hold a few spare laptops at each of these places so that we can provide teachers with laptops when their laptops need to be serviced.

We are starting Rural Technology Centres at various places to serve children in classes 9 to 12. Two new RTCs at Poondi and Kannigaiper were started in June and a new one is being started at Kayathar in Sept. We provided each of these RTCs with 5 laptops from Ford. Marutham Farm School is an alternative school in Thiruvannamalai that in various ways works closely with Asha including training of our teachers, panellists in our conference etc. Olcott Memorial School is also a school that has been working closely with Asha for a number of years in terms of training, using our Asha Kanini etc.

Here is a list of the other centres and schools.

• School / Centre	Use of Laptops	Computers Assigned
  Chennai Office	Spare	3
  Sangamam Office	Spare	4
  Thulasi Office	Spare	2
  Seeyapoondi Computer centre	Teach Students	4
  Pearl Office	Spare	2
  Olcott Memorial School	Teach Students	2
  Kannigaipeir RTC	Teach Students	5
  Poondi RTC	Teach Students	5
  Kayathar RTC	Teach Students	5
  Marutham Farm School	Teach Students	4
  10 centres		36

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Laptops Received Through Disha

Disha, another NGO also received laptops from Ford. It distributed 16 of these laptops to schools supported by Asha. All of these schools are being serviced by our computer teachers. The following schools received laptops through this. Here is a separate album of this distribution.

School / District	No of Students	Computers Assigned
CPS Canal Bank Road (Chennai)	90	3
PUPS Palavakkam	140	4
PUPS TB Puram	153	3
PUPS Thomur	65	3
PUPS Pattarai Perumbudur	99	3
5 schools	547	16

Visit by Srikanth, Director at Ford

We were glad that Mr.R. Srikanth, Director at Ford Motor Company Private Limited and a member of their CSR Board Committee spent a day visiting our schools and seeing how the laptops that they have generously donated are being used. Two volunteers, Rajaram and Ramakrishnan accompanied him to visit the following schools in Thiruvallur District.

• PUMS TB Puram where our teacher Vanitha demonstrated the programming we teach to classes 6 to 8.
• PUPS Sriramakuppam where our teacher Sulochana demonstrated how we introduce computers to classes 1 to 3.
• PUPS Perittivakkam where our teacher Geetha demonstrated how we teach OpenOffice to classes 4 and 5.
• RTC at Poondi and GHSS Poondi. Our teachers Rajkumari and Dhatchayani explained the digital literacy and programming we teach to the 9^th to 12^th std students. In particular they showed him a couple of unplugged activities that teach children programming without computers.

Here are a couple of photos from the visit. Here is also a blog article written by Mr. Srikanth about this visit.

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