How our charity project Level Up Laptops brought Sussex businesses together to help close the digital divide

Last week, less than a month after its launch, our charity initiative Level Up Laptops made its second delivery of refurbished laptops to local children, who have no access to IT equipment. The 23 refurbished laptops delivered to Carlton Hill School follow 20 that were delivered to St Luke’s Primary School earlier that week.

When my co-founder and I heard news stories about how children without access to devices were falling behind due to a lack of devices while homeschooling, we wanted to do something to help. Almost simultaneously we had the same idea; use our B2B social prospecting technology to reach out to local businesses and ask them to get involved.

We also knew that if local businesses had spare devices or an opportunity to help close the digital divide with a donation, they would step up.

(Rob Harlow - SoPro)

So, because SoPro is designed to help businesses identify prospects before creating awareness and engagement, we were able to quickly identify Sussex business owners and reach out to them with effective personalised messaging.

We also found some fantastic partners in the form of registered charity the Tarner Community Project and Tech-Takeback, a not-for-profit business of experts in circular economy, data erasure, data security, reuse and recycling. These partners helped give the initiative credibility, connections to local schools and refurbishing experience that helped maintain launch momentum.

Working together, we've now made two deliveries of 43 laptops to two local school.

Tamsen Beer the Headteacher at one of our recipient school commented “At Carlton Hill we have worked hard to create a fun and engaging online curriculum - but we realise that it is no good to our pupils if they can't access it!  There are still many of our families who are sharing devices with their siblings and/or parents and are therefore struggling. This incredibly generous initiative by Level Up Laptops will help us to continue to tackle the wide digital divide by giving these families a refurbished laptop to support the children with their remote learning. It will also bring these children back into our school community as they will be able to communicate with classmates and teachers through our blogs and video calls.”

Covid has accelerated the amount of education conducted online and it is critical that vulnerable children don’t fall behind because of a lack of access to learning resources.

We all agree that a successful local economy needs a skilled and empowered workforce. So, ensuring all our local children have access to educational resources during lockdowns, and beyond, is key. These children could be the future developers and innovators we need to keep Brighton and Hove growing.

To find out more about Level Up Laptops and to get involved please visit the website at: https://leveluplaptops.co.uk/

Level Up Laptops will accept any laptop that runs Windows 7 or later plus tablets, which many younger children need for their studies, refurbishing them. We also connect with local schools who will distribute the devices to children struggling to maintain their education remotely.

Any devices donated to Level Up Laptops go through a thorough process to, data erase, refurbish and PAT test them, conducted by our technology partners KLYK or Tech-Takeback, before they are distributed to our partner schools.