Businesses, and especially ICT companies, get regular requests to donate old PCs to schools. Many of these are turned down, but every so often a business gets that truly special request.
Early last year, Moses Mncube, the school principal at the Chief Ngonyama Secondary School in Ndwedwe, arrived at Business Connexion's offices in Durban.
He told Lieben Badenhorst, senior manager of service delivery at Business Connexion, that the school had already finished building the computer classroom.
"We receive many requests for donations, but when Moses arrived at our offices and said that he already had built a secure room for the computer centre, we decided to look into his request," says Badenhorst.
"I committed to assist and took a drive out to Ndwedwe to assess the situation myself. I was shocked at the lack of facilities and the conditions that both the teachers and students were experiencing - children were sitting three to a desk and teachers did not even have desks.
"The computer centre room had been well built, although it had no electricity and was quite small. Theft is one of the problems we have encountered in the past; however, Moses had built a secure room using a safe door to ensure the contents would not be stolen. I was impressed by the initiative Moses had shown to better his school, and both he and I set a goal to have the computer centre finalised by the end of the year.
"In the end, Business Connexion donated over 170 desks and also facilitated the installation of the furniture, electrification, cabling and seven PCs (with the relevant software) in the computer centre. The company also provided office furniture for the teachers and books for the library."
All the deadlines were met and the computer centre was opened at the end of last year.
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