Utelize have pledged their support, and the support of their partners to help fund the opening of a new Solar Learning Lab in Xitlhelani, South Africa.
Utelize; an IT managed service provider; specialising in mobile workforce technology, IoT and mobile data services, will raise funds for the project with the support of their strategic channel partners and corporate customers, by donating 100% of the proceeds from recycled mobile devices and unused IT hardware to the project. In return, the businesses who gift their devices receive a device inventory and certified data wipe of their devices to ensure they are free of corporate and personal data.
The lab will provide 11 workstations, 10 dedicated student workstations plus one for the teacher and members of the community will be given digital training through ICDL.
For this project, we will work with the Amandla Foundation, which award scholarships and moving allowances to children undergoing social vulnerability in the northeaster South Africa, specifically in Xitlhelani and Rhulani, Limpopo, the province with the highest poverty rate. Since 2014, they have worked with the families, schools, chiefdom leaders and the communities creating a strong and long-lasting relationship. Their mission is to break the social division through the quality of education. Through their work, they identified that bridging the digital divide is key to achieving this mission. This is where we come in, as one of the oldest organisations working in ICT for Development this project will help bring access to technology to the local community.
In addition, Guifi.net a bottom-up citizenship-driven technological, social and economic project to create a free, open and neutral telecommunications network and Zenzeleni, a community-owned wireless internet service provider based in rural South Africa will be involved in making this project a success.
Matt Atkinson, Managing Director of Utelize believes the partnership with Computer Aid is a natural fit that will really appeal to their existing corporate customers and partners who are looking for better ways to dispose of unused and end of life smartphones and tablets.
“Utelize’s services are all about simplifying the process of deploying and managing technology for mobile and remote workers in large organisations. We all know that unused and end of life mobile devices like smartphones and tablets can be recycled and resold, however the reality is that too many of these unused devices never get beyond being stored in drawers, cupboards or boxes in the IT department, often without being data wiped. The initial response that we’ve had to the project from IT Directors and CIO’s has been really positive, and we’ve already received material commitments to gift unused devices.”
Matt Atkinson, Managing Director of Utelize
You can follow the progress of this project here