High-tech charity: Projects provide computers to Kentucky's needy
BYLINE: By ROGER ALFORD, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: FRANKFORT Ky.
It used to be food, clothes and other basic necessities of life.
Now, computers are popular items being donated to needy families in Appalachia, and a Kentucky project called No Child Left Offline is helping to create interest in high-tech charity.
The project refurbishes used government computers, loads them with the latest software and distributes them to children in some of the state's poorest counties. It's one of several initiatives aimed at helping to erase the digital divide between rich and poor.
In less than a year, No Child Left Offline has distributed nearly 900 computers to children in the mountainous eastern half of the state, and is readying 500 more to be given away. That initiative, coupled with several others under way in rural Kentucky are helping to narrow the digital divide for the state's estimated 215,000 children who live in homes without computers.
"We would have never been able to buy a computer of our own," said Rita Morgan of Stearns, whose husband was one of 85 people who lost jobs when an air bag factory closed two years ago.
Morgan was at her daughter Kayla's school when a truck rolled in with refurbished Dell computers, loaded with Microsoft software and packaged with Lexmark International printers from the No Child Left Offline initiative. "Just the look on these kids faces. They were ecstatic about getting these computers."
With well known charities like Christian Appalachian Project providing food and other necessities of life, others have begun providing the computers. The Technology Gift Incentive Foundation Team in Prestonsburg has provided computers to financially strapped college students, while the Letcher County Action Team joined with Dell to donate computers to residents in one of the poorest communities in the nation.
The No Child Left Offline is one of the newest and best known of the initiatives. It was started by Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration to increase the number of homes with computers and Internet connections. The project is a partnership between several state agencies, private business and the Appalachian Regional Commission, and is aimed specifically at students in some of the state's poorest counties.
Originally, it was aimed at Appalachian communities in Clay, Johnson, McCreary, Owsley and Wolfe counties, but plans call for it to be expanded to the rest of the state by ConnectKentucky, the Bowling Green-based nonprofit group that oversees the project.
Rita Morgan said the refurbished computers have meant that children no longer have to rely solely on computers in schools or public libraries to do research for class assignments.
"Now it's just so much easier without having to run here or there," she said. "It was definitely a blessing. It's hard to express. We would never been able to do it on our own."
Andrew McNeill, head of policy and advocacy for ConnectKentucky, said goals of the organization include making broadband available in every community in the state by the end of 2007. Already, nearly 90 percent of households have access to affordable broadband, he said.
"We're literally leapfrogging other states, and moving ahead exponentially in people actually using broadband services," McNeill said.
McNeill said ConnectKentucky has been involving community leaders across the state in the push to expand the number of families with Internet access. He said fewer than 40 percent of children in families with annual incomes below the federal poverty level have computers at home. More than 75 percent of children in wealthier homes have computers, he said.
No Child Left Offline also ensures that refurbished computers donated by state agencies and private providers will be used for the benefit of Kentucky families instead of being buried in landfills.
American Electric Power Foundation has contributed $100,000 to pay for refurbishing 500 additional state computers to be sent to Carter, Lawrence and Morgan counties in eastern Kentucky.
When those are distributed, some 1,300 children will have received their own computers through the program since the first of the year, McNeill said. The goal is to donate about 2,000 computers a year through the initiative.
Once state computers reaches an average 3 years old, hard drives are erased and No Child Left Offline reloads them with software, packages them with new printers donated by Lexmark, and distributes them through school districts.
McNeill said the value of the computers, software and printers already delivered to children exceeds $2 million.
The University of Louisville has begun providing its retired computers for the initiative, and ConnectKentucky is looking for other Kentucky universities and corporations to join.
ConnectKentucky President and CEO Brian Mefford said the one goal of the project is to help needy Kentuckians enter the Information Age.
"Home computers," Mefford said, "are essential tools for all Kentucky learners."
On the Net:
No Child Left Offline: http://www.nclo@connectky.org.