Mea Culpa, and Covid-19

Hi all,

I owe you, and myself, an apology.  I've stopped doing one of the things that made me who I am, and that helped so many students along the way.  I used to take in donated computers at my old job, refurbish them and give them out to students in need.  Now, due to Covid-19, this is being done by wireless stores, community colleges and I'm sure many that I don't know about.  I want to see this movement to give everyone tech grow and thrive, and I'm not sure my place in all of that, but I've reached out to the community college to see if I can help. 

To reiterate my beliefs about this, I believe everyone should have working technology and the ability to get on the internet.  I believe this can be achieved through a sort of trickle down, where everyone gives their old devices to someone who needs them.  If everyone could do this, and knew how to erase their data or make old machines young again (using linux, ubuntu or debian or just a factory reset) I think that at least in places like the US where we have so much, we could give our old tech to people who would need it and appreciate it.  In this way, we could give places like Hartford, Waterbury and Bridgeport what they need during this pandemic.  Instead of trying to stretch our supplies of beat up, donated chromebooks so that everyone has technology, we could depend on the goodwill of others. 

Along with the actual hardware, places like Hartford also need electricity and internet for each household.  I'm not sure how to guarantee that during this pandemic, and it's a larger problem than I can solve alone.  But I can try to help by soliciting donations, refurbishing machines and giving them to people in need.  I'd like to do this on a larger scale, but the barriers are:

a) Money (This takes some infrastructure, and income for me to support my family)
b) Donations (I've never been able to get more than my own personal friends, family and coworkers to donate)
c) Finding people in need (This has traditionally been my students in Hartford, but that's not enough - it can't just be the people who happened to have need and happened to be in my class)

Anyway, I hope you all find some way to be gr8ful today,

~Mark