My son Allen and I have started volunteering at Free Geek Vancouver. Free Geek was founded to ethically recycle computers. While there are organizations that will recycle computers, many of them ship the computers off shore or otherwise violate internation conventions for the recycling of hazardous materials (computers have many). Not only does Free Geek insure that dead computers are recycled ethically and according with international conventions, it takes working computers and rebuilds them, offerring them for sale at very low prices. Most of the customers in the Free Geek Vancouver store come from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, the poorest neighborhood in Canada.
Allen is keen to volunteer as he gets a free computer, preinstalled with Ubuntu Linux, once he has volunteered twenty-four hours. It also forms part of his community service, which he’s required to do as part of his school program. It’s a fun father and son activity — the time goes by quickly when we volunteer together.
There are more than 2,000 volunteers registered with Free Geek Vancouver. The entire work area is kept incredibly organized into individual work stations. For each work station there is a white board with instructions on exactly the steps to follow for the station. In the picture above, Allen is following the instructions for testing printers. We’ve only volunteered four times so far and already both Allen and I are gaining a lot of new knowledge about the insides of computers and how they are put together, while doing something positive for our community.
“Coincidences happen to often to be coincidence”….
I did my first shift at Free Geek last week!…quite the place and concept isn’t it. In fact I was at the Card Sorting / Testing station directly behind where Allen is shown in the photo.
I also understand that rebuilt systems are donated to various causes that submit applications.
Simon