The website is indexed by the major search engines, and as a result we frequently receive email from all over the world. Here are just a couple of inquiries, received in the last week, and our responses:
My name is Michael Kim, a librarian in OSU-Stillwater. I am wondering if there is any organization in Stillwater accept/refurbish/distribute old PC to needies. Have you heard about any organization in Stillwater which does similar jobs like yours? I'd be interested to volunteer. I read about your organization in TulsaWorld. However, it's quite commuting between Stillwater and Tulsa to volunteer. If there is no organization in Stillwater, I guess it might be possible to start a community-based organization in Stillwater. If that's the case, would you give me any advice?
No I am not aware of one in Stillwater. As http://helpingtulsa.org/news/ada1010.htm indicates we did help a group get started in Ada I would be happy to help you start such an organization, and in fact if you can come over to Tulsa for a day or two to learn how to use an Road Warrior and the other floppies we use, we can even provide you with your own Road Warrior to get your project going. See http://helpingtulsa.org/howto to see what I am talking about.
My name is Lee Sapara, I am the Technology Development Manager for the Marieval Enterprise Center Inc. The Marieval Enterprise Center is a non-profit organization located on Cowessess First Nations Reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada. A federal government organization (Industry Canada) had given us money to purchase equipment for the development of a Computer Refurbishing Center. We are currently 1 year into this project. We have been accessing computer equipment from various companies in Canada as well as other not-for-profit organizations. I had seen your website TCS and I noticed that you are doing well, and my hat is off to you and I wish you great success. We would like to recover costs of training and time used in refurbishing computer. Our staff would like to use the refurbishing center as a training ground to help those who don’t have an education to learn about technology; but at the same time we need to be able to employ these people while they are being educated so that they can pay rent, food, and other basic living expenses. The computers that are refurbished would then be donated to other non-profits and people who could not afford to purchase their own computers (primarily children). I am just writing to ask you if you have any suggestions that might be handy in the sustainability of such a center. Any resources and or advice you may have would be greatly appreciated.
I wish you the best of luck on your endeavor To learn how we do our project see http://helpingtulsa.org/howto All of the pages are visible there, but if you want a more organized structure see http://helpingtulsa.org/howto/index.htm If you want to send someone to Tulsa for a few days to see how we do things, we would be happy to show them, and when they leave, provide them with a copy of the disks we use and an "Image Computer" (described in detail in the above mentioned webpages).