World Computer Exchange

• Our young and old volunteers gather, refurbish, and pack donated Computers to be used in schools in developing countries that our Field Associates, Strategic Allies, and volunteer Development Officers help vet and coach.

• Our volunteers gather, get permission, and develop our own educational Content to load into each computer we ship as many sites do not have regular or affordable internet access.

• Our volunteers have developed a project and materials for teachers in developing countries to Inspire Girls to pursue careers that involve technology. We are beginning to build this in countries where we have Field Associates in Africa and Puerto Rico.

• Our Field Associates representing us in 11 African countries and Puerto Rico recruit and work with volunteer professional programmers to train youth in our online Coding Bootcamps.

• Our Chapter Coordinators in 15 sites in the USA and our Field Associates representing us in 11 African countries, Puerto Rico, and India help develop training videos and resources to continue to expand our network of Refurbishing Clubs in schools.

Have chapters around the USA and Canada where our volunteers refurbish and pack and ship donated used desktops and laptops to our formal partner organizations in developing countries for youth to be able to use to access the internet.

Have teams of volunteers developing a rich array of educational content in English, French, and Spanish that is loaded in all of the computers that WCE ships. This content is for off line use when our formal partner organizations cannot access the internet because of cost or lack of connection.

Have several volunteer Development Officers per developing country where we have formal partner organizations who help on line and on site to build their capacity and provide them with needed training in technology, planning, partnership, and fund raising. We are piloting having paid Field Associates in 10 developing countries to provide more direct training and computer support as needed.

Have our chapters work with their high school students to grow WCE clubs in their high schools to refurbish computers following WCE methodology and loading WCE educational content. These clubs have formed the basis for similar clubs in high schools and vocational schools in Puerto Rico. As these are developed we will offer these in the 10 developing countries where we have paid Field Associates.

Our Field Associates have recruited teachers with students in their respective developing countries to work with U.S. teachers with similar-aged students to co-develop one of our 5 resources for teachers in developing countries who are interested in inspiring girls to pursue careers in technology. These tools include related after school clubs, games and apps, and educational curricular materials.

World Computer Exchange (WCE) was formed in 2000 as a global non-profit education and environment organization that was to be primarily staffed by volunteers. From the beginning a core principal was that WCE works with and through vetted local Partner organizations that contribute financial matches. We recruited 250 volunteer Development Officers to help with online capacity building in tech planning and fund raising for our partner organizations.

Within three years, WCE began sending out teams of eCorps volunteers to help with trouble-shooting and training, From this we learned to improve our refurbishing and packing. We also learned that we needed to provide educational materials on the computers to be more useful when our partner organizations could not access or afford internet connections.

WCE developed an initiative funded by a grant of $200,000 from CIDA in Canada about eWaste in Latin America - based with a WCE partner in Bolivia.

In 2012, WCE began piloting special projects for girls in technology. This gradually expanded the educational content that we load in our computers.

In another few years we began recruiting and working with Field Associates in 11 countries in Africa and in Puerto Rico. They represent us locally and provide training and computer repair. This also helped us to strengthen the local foundations for our pilot girls projects. In Puerto Rico this work began supporting teacher training in computer science funded by a $25,000 grant from the Google Foundation.

WCE developed a eCorps program that sent teams of volunteer trouble-shooters and coaches to many African countries. This had to stop during the pandemic.

At the beginning of the pandemic, our Field Associates began seeking training materials and online support for local school refurbishing clubs like we have across the USA. They also found demand for our online coding bootcamps in their countries. This required training in basic online distance learning. We established teams to develop our coding and refurbishing projects. We also worked to develop pilots of each for girls. Gradually, several of our Field Associates recruited women to coordinate the girls project in their country.

Through the years, we found it useful to work in collaboration with 25 global education and environment Strategic Allies including our working with Peace Corps Volunteers in 17 developing countries, with the United Nations in 6 developing countries, with Rotary Clubs in 18 countries, and iEARN country affiliates in 13 countries.

Throughout, WCE has increased the sophistication of our refurbishing that lead to a more reliable and robust product. We went from sending computers with no OS, to installing with Ubuntu CD (just a basic package of software) to building and cloning computers with specialized educational software to adding specialized educational software and finally to adding language based educational content.

Over the years, WCE piloted Chapters in (see below)

USA, Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and are now exploring one in India and several in Africa. Our work in Puerto Rico has been funded by a $100,000 grant from the 20/22 Act Foundation. WCE gradually expanded our network of interested organizations to 5,000 in 79 developing countries - almost 1,000 are formal partners.

SUMMARY: Since 2000, 5.2 million youth in 3,650 schools, universities, youth centers and libraries have used computers refurbished by our volunteers to access the internet.

WCE computers are traditionally refurbished by volunteers in WCE Chapters in a dozen cities in the USA, Puerto Rico, and Canada. After the first few years, WCE has played a stronger role with our younger volunteers. Many have used WCE experience as a gateway to new careers. Many high school students have used WCE experience as a basis for getting summer jobs, choosing a college major, and writing college essays for scholarships.

WCE began to formalize this a couple of years ago, when we began developing school refurbishing clubs in fifteen locations in the USA. This work was funded by a $25,000 grant from the Bregman Foundation. A volunteer team began to develop training materials so that WCE can begin to expand our Refurbishing Clubs into Africa countries. Part of our future plans is to shift more of our computer refurbishing into developing countries.

WCE operates through 600 volunteers per year and operates as much as possible as a virtual organization to keep our costs low so that WCE has consistently kept fundraising expenses below 4%.

WCE has learned to build our local capacity in developing countries to develop our five services so that we can further expand each to make us stronger and more effective.