A retired electrical engineer is fighting technology inequality by refurbishing second-hand laptops and donating them to schools in the Yarra Ranges.
Wandin District Senior Citizens Club member Ray Cooper collected, refurbished and restored over a hundred old laptops before donating them to the Upper Yarra Secondary College (UYSC) on 23 July.
The great-grandfather’s efforts resulted in 117 students from low-income families getting access to essential education technology without any costs attached.
“Every child in Victoria in school should have a laptop,” Mr Cooper said.
Many Victorian schools have a bring-your-own-device policy for students.
While it can save on costs for the school, it also has the potential to put some families in a tough spot.
Finder’s Parenting Report 2023 stated 15 per cent of families couldn’t provide a laptop or tablet for their children when they needed it for school.
It means out of 700 of UYSC’s students, there’s possibly 105 without access to their own laptop.
“That’s students who have to go through school either sharing a laptop, but when they leave school and go home, it’s minus a laptop.
“It affects a student’s education because it’s important now for every student to have a laptop,” Mr Cooper said.
The majority of the laptops from Mr Cooper’s most recent donation came from Pinewood Primary School in Mount Waverly.
The private school’s generosity to give Mr Cooper the old laptops for free is something he wants to become common practice among big tech firms that sell its old computers and laptops to reseller companies.
“These corporations who donate one or two hundred laptops to companies who then refurbish them and sell them back to the school, their intent is to sell them.”
He was critical of these companies and charities still making money off selling the refurbished laptops, which is why he’d taken matters into his own hands.
“They [reseller companies] sell them online. And to sell them online to generate funds for various other charities is meaning that the kids here do not get laptops.”
Mr Cooper certainly didn’t make a profit himself from donating the laptops – in fact, it’s left him $1200 out of pocket as he had to purchase power supplies and other essential components for some of the laptops.
“I know in Melbourne, there’s thousands of kids that do it tough,” he told A Current Affair in October 2024.
“When I grew up, I was very poor, didn’t get much choice, so I can relate to them. You have to be there to understand it.”
