CARE computers for Ghanaian schools

A Ghanaian born British citizen, Jib Kweku Hagan, 52, and his two daughters, Phoebe, 11 and Alice, nine, are on a noble mission to help extremely under-resourced schools in Ghana to catch up with the fast developing ICT world.

It was Phoebe who inspired her father's mission because she decided to do something about her inability to communicate by e-mail with relatives and friends in Ghana.

Phoebe and Alice visited Ghana five years ago and made friends but on their return to West Sussex, England, where they live, they could not communicate with their newly made friends so Phoebe in particular decided to help. She asked her head teacher, Mr. David Newnham at Chesswood Middle School if she could be given some of the redundant computers in the school?s store house to give to her friends in Ghana and the head teachers said yes. Mr. Newnham, who would later become the Chairman of the board of Trustees for CARE, asked Phoebe to tell her Dad, Jib to write formerly to the school, requesting for used computers. That was how it all begun.

When Ghanadot met with Jib in his Worthing County home, he said ?Phoebe woke me up at 1 am midnight and told me about her school?s willingness to supply used computers to be sent to Ghana. I was compelled to draft the letter and send to the school that same morning.?

From then on Jib, a Transport Engineer and staff of British Oxygen Corporation (BOC) Edwards, has taken more than a keen interest in that noble mission. He has taken it to another level. Jib has established an organization he calls Collect And Recycle Ecologically (CARE) Computers for Developing Countries, mainly to collect and recycle used PCs, printers, scanners, laptops and accessories in UK and ship them to schools in his homeland, Ghana.

Over the past four years, CARE has collected and recycled about 2,000 used computers not just from schools but also from businesses and private homes in and around Worthing.

The first consignment of 800 computers with printers and scanners was shipped to Ghana in February this year and 120 of them have already been distributed to six secondary and technical schools in the Greater-Accra, Central, Eastern and Brong-Ahafo Regions. 680 computers are still waiting to be distributed to 14 more schools and institutions.

Currently there are about a 1,000 more already recycled PCs, laptops, printers and scanners, with spare parts, including mother boards, hard drives and others stocked in the in a store house at BOC Edwards, waiting to be shipped to Ghana.

What CARE does specifically is to collect redundant computers, wipe all the Hard Drives to British Ministry of Defense standards (i.e. completely wipe off all programmes from the Hard Drive) using IBM Security Data Disposal (SDD), before loading on the appropriate software and shipping them to Ghana.

Once the computers arrive in Ghana, CARE has established a Service and Distribution Center at Dansoman in Accra to undertake all its operations in the homeland. The center is being manned by highly qualified ICT personnel.

Jib and his visionary daughter, Phoebe were in Ghana in February to formerly open the Service and Distribution Centre and to meet with the Minister?s of Education, Science and Sports and of Environment for obvious reasons.

They had a plus; they met with the Second Lady, Hajia Ramatu Mahama, wife of the Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama. Hajia happily offered to be a life patron of CARE and she is already on a mission to raising support for CARE.

Jib told Ghanadot that, ?ultimately we intend for the project to benefit not only secondary schools but also first cycle and tertiary institutions across the country.?

So far the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports have provided a list of 23 schools and institutions to benefit from CARE computers, whiles the second lady is soon to provide a list underprivileged NGO schools she is involved with to benefit from the project.

Jib, winner of KAIZEN Award for being the second most skillful problem solver in BOC Edwards, sounded very excited and fulfilled about the whole project, which is also intended to establish ICT clubs (ICT ROOMS), whose members would have an additional responsibility of helping to collect plastic and rubber litter from the streets for recycling instead of burning.

He chooses to call the members of the ICT clubs ?Eco-Warriors?. The name depicts Jib?s vision to help save the environment by inculcating a recycling culture in the present generation of children, instead of the rampant burning of rubber and its attendant greenhouse gas emissions.

Jib is particularly worried about the cancerous emissions from the burning of rubber and its effect on our environment and the health of children in particular.

?The gas emission from burning plastic and rubber is cancerous and we need to stop doing that. CARE intends to assist the schools to recycle those rubber litters instead,? Jib said.

In the fashion of a true selfless visionary, Jib have for the past four years been funding the computer recycling project from his own resources. He has since the start of the project spent at least 17, 000 pounds sterling ($34,000) of his own money on recycling computers.

It was only when the computers were ready to be shipped to Ghana that he managed to get support from his employers BOC Edwards to the tune of 10,000 pounds ($20,000) for the shipment of the first consignment of computers to Ghana.

Apparently the BBC recently got wind of Jib?s noble mission and gave CARE wide publicity, which attracted some material support from a wide range of sources.

CARE has recently received support in the form of computers and accessories from West Sussex County Council Children and Young People's Service, University of Sussex (Innovation-Centre), Citizens Advice Bureau (Worthing), the Government of Ghana and large number of schools in West Sussex. They have also had publicity in local media which is expanding their promises of support rapidly.

Jib has put in an application for CARE to the British Charity Commission and hopes to get some support from the commission for his work.

Ghanadot thinks that people like Jib and his daughters deserve maximum support to effectively make the kind of contribution they have set on their hearts, especially in this day and age where ICT has become a basic and necessity and inevitable.