This Youth Day, the Shuttleworth Foundation's tuXlabs project, which provides rural schools with open source computer facilities, donated 28 computers and open source software to the Heartbeat Centre for Community Development at a ceremony held at Melrose Arch Shopping Centre, Johannesburg.
Heartbeat is a non-profit organisation that mobilises communities to care for and support orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in some of SA's historically disadvantaged areas, says Sunette Pienaar, CEO of Heartbeat.
The Shuttleworth Foundation, through tuXlabs, partnered with Sahara Systems, Absa and Barclays for the project. It will provide necessary IT training and computers to Heartbeat's community development centres across the country.
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Heartbeat's permanent employees and volunteers from the surrounding communities operate after-school centres, where the computers will be used to expose OVC to, and familiarise them with computing, says Riah Phiyega, Absa Group executive.
Twenty-six PCs will be distributed to Heartbeat's after school centres, which cater to about 5 000 children in Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and Free State, says Phiyega.
Two laptops and one colour printer will enable the Heartbeat central office to do general office administration, data capturing and stakeholder presentations.
Training forms part of a mentoring and empowerment programme offered to children, child-care workers and social workers. Centres will become self-sufficient by training stakeholders to set up and run the computer equipment, says Hilton Theunissen, tuXlab programme manager for the Shuttleworth Foundation.
Heartbeat officials will be given two days' training on open source by a tuXlab entrepreneur, who is running a computer centre at a school in Soweto.
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