Create Satellite Computer Refurbishing Projects

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life."
- Chinese Proverb

The Chinese Proverb makes a lot of sense. We have plenty of space available for our Computer Refurbishing Project, but it is still limited, and when a news article is published in the local paper or when our project is mentioned on tv and it prompts a lot of donations at one time it frequently is filled up with material to be evaluated. We have some very good people working on our project, but the number of people we can motivate to participate is still limited, so we adapted the idea of "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life", and adopted our variation:

"Fix an old computer for a man
and he will have a computer that will solve his needs for a while.
Teach a man to fix computers
and he will have a computer for the rest of his life,
and he can fix computers for his friends and neighbors."

This concept started when Jim Erwin of the Belize Bible and Trade School came to Tulsa and spent a few months working with us on Computer Refurbishing, and then went back to Belize and began teaching computer repair classes at the Belize school. After completing his program, students were able to get some of the best paying jobs in the entire country, since there were practically no trained computer repair technicians in Belize.

After spending a year or so teaching Computer Repair at the Belize Bible and Trade School, Jim returned to Tulsa and is currently leading the Bethesda Boys Ranch side of our joint project. He has a team of volunteers who come in every day to work on refurbish computers, he teaches the boys at Bethesda Boys Ranch how to repair computers, giving them a trade they can fall back on when they leave the Ranch, and he teaches classes at Central Tech (one of Oklahoma's Technology Centers (formerly called VoTech), and his students refurbish some of our computers also. The TCS volunteers still get together at Bethesda Boys Ranch on the 1st, 4th, (and if there is one, 5th) Saturdays of each month, and we work on the problem computers that the others could not get to work, and I do everything I can to publicize our joint project, and bring in more donations for us to work on.

The machines that are donated to our project are old machines, and while we fix anything that is broken in them when we get them, they are more likely to develop new problems than are newly manufactured machines. Therefore we have established a policy that if an agency requests more than 10 machines, we strongly urge them to send someone to work with our people for a few weeks, to learn how we do what we do, so that they can fix any of the machines we provide them if they break after they receive them, and so that if they receive donations from people in their area, that they can do the same Computer Refurbishing we do.

We have assisted the creation of Computer Refurbish operations at First Methodist, New Hope, and a church in Claremore, plus international operations at the Belize Bible and Trade School and a ministry in Mexico City, and we are working on assisting programs with Creek Nations, North Tulsa Love Foundation, and a church in Lawton. We have provided them copies of the disks and other tools we use, and in some cases have provided a supply of spare parts and even donated computers needing repair, as well as operational machines for them to use immediately.

Working through APCUG's Community Service committee and National Cristina Foundation I would like to exchange ideas about how each User Group running a Computer Refurbishing Project operates. It may be that other groups can learn from what we have done, and it may be that we can also learn from what they have done, and that the programs of all groups will benefit from this sharing of ideas.

To initiate this sharing of ideas, I have documented the tools we use. I would love to be able to distribute to other User Groups a copy of the MasterCD we have developed, since it, together with the Drive setup disk, Clone 3, and Clone 4 disks that can be made from the MasterCD, but unfortunately it includes several Commercial Programs which we have no right to distribute. We are working on developing a set of procedures to show other User Groups how to produce their own MasterCD (we hope to have them available by early November), and then we are going to work on producing a MasterCD which does not involve the use of any commercial files (other than the Operating System images, of course), and we hope to be able to get permission from Microsoft to include those Operating System images (which are just DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95a, and Windows 95b). If we can get permission to do this, then we would be able to make copies of that MasterCD available to other User Groups, either in the form of a CD, or an ISO file which could be put on the internet, which UGs could use to burn their own MasterCDs. To assist us in this effort, I would appreciate it if User Groups operating a Computer Refurbishing Project would send me an email and let me know whether you would prefer to have an ISO file posted on the Net that you could download and burn your own MasterCD (you would obviously need a broadband connection, because the file would be almost 700 mb), or whether you would want me to make and ship you a CD, and if so how much would you be willing to pay for it, and what would you expect in the way of documentation (other than that available on our web site). It will help us to make a decision between two approaches which have been proposed:

  1. Making our tools available on the same Pro Bono basis that we make our Refurbished Computers available for free to schools, churches, and non-profit agencies, vs
  2. Charging a reasonable fee for the CD, to raise money which could then be used to buy parts we might need in our project.

I am also interested in people's thoughts on ways to restrict these tools to use for non-profit organizations. In other words I am willing to do a lot to help other non-profit organizations, but I am not particularly interested in providing either free or inexpensive tools for money-making commerical computer repair businesses.

Another project which I would like to pursue, once we get a MasterCD which does not use commerical software, and hence which can be distributed, is making special versions, including one with freeware and shareware software for schools, and another with freeware and shareware software for churches, with Bible based games, preinstalled, or set up so that they can be installed by the recipient organization. I would be interested in any freeware or shareware software other User Group would recomend be used for this project. If you have any which you would like for us to include, when we get to the creation of those customized MasterCDs email them to me.