An Aberystwyth charity is supporting secondary school students in the area and tackling digital poverty by providing refurbished laptops to assist with home learning.

Rotary Aberystwyth launched the Laptops for Home Learning scheme on 21 January, urging the public to donate any unwanted laptops to the charity to be refurbished and donated to secondary school pupils in the area.

While the scheme is still in its infancy, John Bradshaw said they hope to work with Ysgol Penglais and Ysgol Penweddig.

John spearheaded the effort after “observing” issues with home learning: “I saw the BBC had a laptop scheme but when I drilled into it, it was just a list of projects going on in different areas, and there was none in Aberystwyth.

“It was clear to me that there wasn’t a national scheme and it had to be done locally. Rotary is the ideal organisation to do it because we seem to have many contacts in the area. Other Rotary organisations area doing it, so I contacted a couple of those to give us a bit of an idea.”

John added: “Hopefully we’re going to collect laptops, and then we’ve made arrangements to clean them up because data is a serious problem. We’re planning to remove the hard drive, replace it, and upload a suitable operating system.”

President Howard Jones said the organisation felt “frustrated” they had not been able to support the Aberystwyth community as they had in past years due to Covid-19, and are pleased to have found a project they can get “stuck into”.

While the scheme has come to fruition due to Covid-19, John and Howard hope it can tackle digital poverty in the long term.

John said: “No question about it, it’s a worthwhile thing to do.

“Even though, hopefully, the Covid-19 crisis will be over soon and the children will return to schools, it is still a beneficial thing that we can give them a home computer.

“If we can target the right people, it can benefit them in the long term.”

Howard added: “The well offs will be okay, but I’m sure there’s a lot of children falling through the net. It’s a postcode lottery.

“When I was working with the head of sensory, I dealt with deaf and blind children in schools. Sometimes it was frustrating because I came from a large school to a rural area and you obviously don’t get the same resources.

“The digital poverty is apparent.”

If anybody has a “redundant” laptop they would be willing to donate, please visit the Rotary website at www.aberystwythrotary.uk.

If anybody would like to make a financial donation, to assist Rotary with the necessary refurbishment works, please also visit the above Rotary website.