Pennington School students are helping children in Africa by providing educational resources through refurbished iPads.
The iPads are pre-loaded with education apps, books, and other learning tools that have been tested and selected by Pennington School students, according to school officials.
This project began during the 2018-19 school year and has been aided recently by a $4,590 grant from the Toshiba America Foundation. The foundation’s mission is to help make STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning fun in the classroom.
The Pennington student’s refurbished iPads will go to children in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, Africa. There will be a total of 80 iPads for the children in the camp.
“So we did approximately 40 iPads last year and will do at least 40 this year as well. Right now the children in the camp are already using the 40 iPads we sent last year,” said Susan Wirsig, director of Pennington’s Applied Science Certificate Program. “We have another 26 already completed and will have 40 completed by the time we travel to the refugee camp in March of 2020.”
The idea for the project began more than a year ago when Wirsig reconnected with a former classmate from Harvard.
“We have worked together on number of projects through the years. She was heading to Malawi with her family and she was doing work in this refugee camp,” Wirsig said. “She would describe what she was seeing and not seeing, because they have limited resources there.”
She said at the same time she was having a conversation with Ken Coakley the director of Technology at the Pennington School.
“Pennington is a one to one iPad school. He was telling me that is is cost prohibitive to repair the iPads once the iPads have a cracked screen, are past a certain age, or are not working,” Wirsig said. “So they have this graveyard of iPads that accumulate in the basement of the tech center.”
After speaking with senior Trevor Belinsky about how he was making some money over the summer by repairing cracked screens for family and friend’s phones, everything came together for the creation of the project, according to Wirsig.
Under Belinksy’s guidance more than 50 students are repairing the cracked screens on iPads that are accumulating in the technology center.
“All of the iPads are from the Pennington School,” Wirsig said.
The grant received by the Toshiba America Foundation will support replacing screens on the iPads, special cases that iPads fit into to protect them from the harsh conditions, and also to helping create an iPad solar charging cart.
“The solar charging cart is designed by Belinsky who created it for his senior capstone project. The cart will accompany the next 40 iPads that will be sent to the refugee camp,” Wirsig said. “We will get the solar panels from a company in Malawi and his designed has been sent to a factory in Malawi. The factory is going to build his design. The cart is designed to hold 30 iPads and is made from wood and steel.”
She said the students would come in on there free time and to be a part of this project.
“The students are invested and there is that social connection to other humans that they are helping. They were highly engaged and I think that was because this project was adding value to people’s lives,” Wirsig said.
