One Person’s Trash is Another’s Treasure.

Nowadays, technology is constantly changing causing people to upgrade to the latest products almost monthly. But what happens to what they previously owned? To Cass & Bishop, a law firm in Burlington Ontario; it did not make sense to put their old computers to waste, and decided that they wanted to donate some of their used computers. Along with the help of McMaster University and the Rotary Club of Hamilton AM 20 computers were gathered, and prepared for donation.

Binatech System Solutions, located in Hamilton Ontario, refurbished and cleared all data from all the computer’s hard drives at no charge, and on June 21^st, 2010 the computers were presented to the grade 8 graduating class at Hess St. Public School by Mark Ewer of the Rotary Club of Hamilton AM.

“We thought it was a really great idea for these computers to be given to Hess St. School instead of them winding up in the junk pile.” –Mark Ewer

Hess St. Public School has 407 students with almost half born outside of Canada. Many households are led by single parents, and are working hard to rise above the designated poverty level, as well as some students coming directly from refugee camps and have no formal education.  “These are all intelligent kids, but we are giving them the resources for them to do their best.” – Joan Haworth, Vice President of Binatech System Solutions.

These are students who would otherwise not have a computer to use when entering High School. The computers are Pentium 4 PC’s and come with refurbished flat screen monitors, new keyboard and mouse, and their own USB key. These computers will give the students an opportunity to reach their goals and achieve their full potential throughout their high school years. “Maybe we will find that creative writer in this group of kids because now they have Microsoft Word, or maybe we will find that accountant because they have access to Microsoft excel”, said Joan Haworth.

The primary message that is strongly supported by the staff at Hess St. School is to “Be cool and stay in school”. The 20 computers donated on June 20^th is a big leap in the right direction for these kids to stay true to that message and will hopefully continue on to a bright future.