First, before we get to our ASK, we want to thank you for all your support. You have contributed in so many ways. From single personal donations of equipment or funds, to larger business/block donations, and even just word of mouth recommendations, your support has allowed us to:

• Give more than 1100 laptops to local students in need.
• Share more than 150 free WiFi hotspots with families who otherwise would not have it at home.
• Support over 135 High School volunteers in our lab, contributing more than 3500 hours of service to the community.
• Responsibly repurpose electronics that would have otherwise gone to a landfill, saving approximately 2 tons of waste.

In addition to helping individual students as they request laptops, we recently equipped the STEAM lab at Buzz Aldrin Middle School with 25 MacBook Pro laptops. We also upgraded the technology lab at Frank J. Napier, Jr. school in Paterson, NJ.  All this tied to your generous support. 

But, we want to do so much more for those in need. The challenges in our and neighboring communities continue, and many students STILL don’t have the tools they need to succeed in school.

Yesterday on a beautiful Spring day Cynthia and Jon delivered 52 freshly refurbished small form factor i3 desktops to the Frank J. Napier, Jr. school in Paterson, NJ. Principal Derwin Smith and Vice-Principal Jennifer Woods will use the new workstations to both replace the aging XP vintage desktops in their computer lab and update the devices driving the smart boards in classrooms. Cynthia Newlin, Laptop Upcycle Board member and long time volunteer, established the relationship with the technology focused school and has led the way by helping us deliver over 30 laptops two months ago directly to students in need at the school. The updated lab will allow teachers at the school top better support their tech programs at the school.

As always, this was a team effort and we have a number of people and organizations to thank. In addition to the amazing work by Cynthia, we appreciate:

• The Electronic Access Foundation (EAF) and Greg Campbell for the supply of small footprint devices they shared with us via our partnership within the Digitunity network.
  
• Our lab volunteers led by Mike Brown who worked so hard to wipe, renovate, update, and clean the donated desktops, and our technical lead Mark Zbucki who helped us with the updates to support the equipment.
• Finally, we are exceedingly grateful to Principal Smith and Vice-Principal Woods for being such positive advocates in support of their community and students. We are pleased to work with such powerful leaders of public school education in Northern NJ. Thank you!

Join Laptop Upcycle as a Summer Intern this Summer and make a difference for young students locally. We are looking for a rising High School Senior or older volunteer to help us expand. Here is the detailed job description:

The successful candidate will work with the Laptop Upcycle Board of Directors to leverage existing promotion and communication channels and explore/develop new tools to expand regional awareness of Laptop Upcycle and promote our mission in three (3) primary areas.

• Seek out new placement of our free laptops (find students who are in need of laptops and organizations that require larger numbers of machines) to individuals and groups (schools/nonprofits).
• Locate and energize donations of equipment (laptops) and funds - individual and especially laptop donations from businesses and corporations.
• Help identify and recruit volunteers to build our internal support organization (find and engage those with interest in our mission).

In this role the intern will also document and report on progress and challenges. They will help instantiate a long term engagement processes (design tools and processes others can use) to support Laptop Upcycles long term growth. This is a communications and networking internship which for the right candidate will be rewarding and provide excellent experience for future opportunities.

We are a 100% volunteer organization, and we can not monetarily compensate you in this role; however, we will provide you with a high quality laptop which you may keep upon the internship completion. Any questions, or to apply for this internship, email us at giveget@laptopupcycle.org.

MIke and his team have been busy in the lab. Read about us here in this month's issue of My Suburban Essex!

This Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) Laptop Upcycle wants to put a laptop under the trees of students in need. Laptop Santa knows that students who have their own laptops for school, projects, personalization, ownership and accountability -- use them and succeed!   Throughout December we'd like your help to brighten the Holiday Season for a local student who cannot afford a laptop for school. 

If you know of a middle or high school student who could use a laptop and can't afford it, let us know.  Our elves are standing by to deliver a refurbished and wrapped laptop that's ready to go under the tree. 

You can help! 

1) Identify students who would benefit and appreciate a holiday gift of a laptop by filling in this short form.

2) Donate a laptop (used or new)

3) Donate funds to support this program!

If you have any questions or would like to suggest a partnership or idea, send us an email at giveget@laptopupcycle.org. Deadline:  Dec 22, 2021

Thank you for being a "giver" this holiday season and giving a student in need a laptop to succeed. In the past 5 years Laptop Upcycle has given out over 1000 laptops to low income and special needs students. We'd like to end this year with a mighty Ho ho ho!

The Laptop Upcycle elves

This week we draw focus on a couple of corporate partners, Laptop Legends, who have made repeat and significant donations to us.

First, we welcome the Boston Consulting Group in Summit, NJ as our newest Laptop Legend. They have now made three significant donations of their lightly used laptops to Laptop Upcycle. It would have been easy for them to simply ship them to a bulk recycling shop, but instead they chose us! Our student volunteers wipe the drives with industry approved software and renovate the laptops for other local students. For those laptops that may be damaged, our team mixes and matches the components to make working systems and we responsibly recycle the rest.

A heartfelt thank you to The Boston Consulting Group!

Is your company currently holding a storage closet full of laptops or do they (gasp!) send them off to corporate clearing house INSTEAD of putting them back to work and in the hands of students who need them? Please contact us.

Greetings students, teachers, parents, and care givers and welcome back to school! We at Laptop Upcycle are pleased that school is back in session and we wish everyone all the best in these difficult times. We have a lot of news to share on multiple fronts; partnerships, milestones, progress in our lab, and new volunteers, but to start a series of posts on these pages we share our opinion on the difference between Chromebooks and other laptops, with a focus on usage in our public schools in Montclair.

The Montclair Board of Education announced in late August of 2021 that they would be issuing Chromebooks to every student as a part of their one-to-one Chromebook initiative (see this Montclair Local article for details). Laptop Upcycle fully supports this effort and we congratulate the district for this action. Getting technology in to the hands of students who need it has been our passion for close to five years now and we have succeeded in giving over 1000 laptops to students locally.

Laptop Upcycle would like you to understand the difference between borrowing a Chromebook from the District and getting one from us. Without further ado -

• A loan of technology versus ownership. A Chromebook loaned from the Montclair school district is a device provided to your student(s) to do their school work. It is theirs to use, but MUST be returned upon the completion of the school year. There are detailed usage and loan requirements from the Montclair Board of Education (MBoE) that you agree to when you receive the Chromebook. We will not list them here since they are quite detailed, but Here is the link. Of note is that families are responsible for the Chromebooks being returned in working condition upon completion of the loan time. Any damage/replacement must be paid for by the family. At Laptop Upcycle, the high quality laptops students GET from us are theirs to keep, no tracking software, no restrictions on use, and no cost. They do not need to return them to us, ever.
  
• Ownership is powerful. We have seen the faces those who have received laptops from us light up when they are told the laptop is THEIRS. We describe how they can take care of their new laptop and all the things they can do with them. In addition to connecting them to school, it connects them to their friends and family.
• Chromebooks are great, but limited. We have also given out many Chromebooks to our younger students. Don't get us wrong, we like them and they certainly are great tools for basic school work. The problems creep in when our students want to do MORE. Want to do detailed work offline on a Chromebook, the answer is no. Want to explore beyond the web browser on your computer and use a special app for something like web development, sound editing, or that fancy new game, sorry the Chromebook won't support that. We could go on, but if you would like to learn more, just see this detailed comparison of the Pros and Cons of Chromebooks.
• The Linux Mint laptops we give to students support all the main stream web browsers (including Chrome) and they provide for incredible access to powerful and unique apps to challenge and meet the needs of our curious students.
• Support. We do not know the exact process for support in the MBoE if a student has problems with their Districts issued Chromebook, but our policy is simple. If you have received a laptop from Laptop Upcycle and it fails for any reason, we will accept its return with no questions asked and you GET a replacement. It doesn't matter if you broke it or some component failed. No judgement, no problems. Easy, right? We have replaced many laptops using this policy and it works great.
  

We hope this brief summary has been helpful. If you have further questions or would like to debate any of the points here, we would be happy to hear from you. Remember, we are a 100% volunteer organization and a 501c3 nonprofit and we enjoy supporting our kids in school. Finally, if you know of a student who needs a laptop for school, please pass on this link to Get a Laptop.

Thanks, Laptop Upcycle