Today the Laptop Upcycle team had an awesome day at the Sentinels-16 Back to School event in Lackawanna Plaza. Board member Cynthia Newlin led the other volunteers Judith Celestin and Rebecca Feit-Klein from Essex County Community College and one of our star High School volunteers Amelia Wong. On a hot day they gave out 80 coupons for free laptops to students in need. Those who picked one up, will stop by the lab next to the library later this week to pick up their own laptop for school this Fall. Please remember that even if you couldn't make it to the plaza today, you can always request a laptop or free hotspot online at our web site here. Thank you so much to our passionate volunteers and all those who came out to meet them today!

Laptop Upcycle has successfully qualified as a participating organization of the T-Mobile Project 10 Million to help provide internet access to all students who need it. This means we have 240 hotspots to hand out to any family in need in our local area.  Go to our Get Technology page to see if you qualify.

If you own one of the more than 230 existing hotspots that we have given out in the past 5 years thanks to the generous grants from the Don Katz and Leslie Larson Foundation, please note that these have been disabled to due to a network consolidation by T-Mobile, and you are eligible for a replacement.

We have scheduled a delivery session for July 30 from 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM in the Laptop Upcycle Lab at 60 South Fullerton Ave, Montclair (use the side entrance and ring the bell if the door is locked).  Bring your old hotspot and get a replacement.  Or apply and get approved online this week. If you are not available this Saturday, please contact us and we can arrange another date/time to meet you.

All hotspots have filters for safe family browsing and are totally free with enough bandwidth for school work. Want to learn more?  Check out https://www.t-mobile.com/business/education/project-10-million

See you in the Lab.

Your Laptop Upcycle Team

Recently we highlighted the initiative championed by our Board member Cynthia Newlin to provide laptops to the Girl Power group led by Special Education Teacher Ms. Renee' Cleaves-Bryant and Paraprofessional Ms. Lydeasha Crawford, who teach at Public School #16 in Paterson, NJ.

In the past 5 years Laptop Upcycle has with the support of a generous donation from the Don Katz and Leslie Larson Foundation provided over 235 free WiFi hotspots to local families of students in need. These devices have been a key component of our strategy of delivering technology tools to those who need them locally.

Two weeks ago we were informed by T-mobile that as a result of the merger between T-mobile and US Sprint that the service on these devices would terminated due to network consolidation. These devices are set to expire today (June 30, 2022).

Laptop Upcycle has been working aggressively with T-mobile to arrange replacements for the sunset devices. We are hopeful that a new agreement with T-mobile to be a part of their Project 10 Million initiative will allow us to replace all of the existing devices, but we have yet to receive final approval.

We hope to have good news very soon and will share our plan for replacement devices as soon as we possibly can. We’re sorry for the pending service disruption, but the short notice was out of our control.

As soon as we have an update, we will share it with all.

Thank you!

Laptop Upcycle outreach to neighboring communities continues to accelerate with the help of Cynthia Newlin's hard work. Recently Cynthia conducted a training session with Special Education Teacher Ms. Renee' Cleaves-Bryant, and Paraprofessional Ms. Lydeasha Crawford, who teaches at Public School #16 in Paterson, NJ. They will assist Laptop Upcycle in distributing and supporting both Girl Power and Boys Group with the tools they need for summer programs and school this Fall. Of course, the 24 laptops they received from us are theirs to keep. We're also looking forward to hosting Girl Power in our lab later this month for some hands-on training! 

Thank you Ms. Cleaves-Bryant, Ms. Crawford, and Cynthia! You all rock!

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!