Ronald McDonald House

Those of you who know me or who have been reading my blog know that I have been asking for donations of used laptops since the Spring of this year. My idea has been to clean and tune these machines and make them available to people who are residents at the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) in Burlington, VT. People, usually parents and families of premature babies or cancer patients or others, can stay at the RMH. The RMH has one desktop PC and a wireless network that those who bring their laptops can use. Many families do not have laptops and I saw this as a need I wanted to try to fill. With a wireless laptop they can then have easy access to e-mail and the internet, or perhaps even online classes for their co-resident kids while staying at the RMH. More importantly, in my vision of this over time, these folks can carry the laptops up to the hospital and access e-mail and the internet from the patient's room. This vision requires cooperation from the hospital in allowing the users to access the hospital's network. I am happy to report that I have already had one successful situation with the hospital doing just this.

So where am I now with this project? I have met with the RMH management and they support me in this. I have 3 usable laptops I have cobbled together from your donations. Starting in November I will make these machines available to the RMH by leaving them at the RMH with the local team of staff and volunteers, and they in turn will make them available to residents who have a need. This is a good news situation and I am really excited about moving forward with the program. As stated elsewhere, I think, this will be done at no cost to anyone, and I will maintain the laptops and provide support to users, again at no cost to anyone.

What can you do to help? I have an urgent need for laptop carrying cases.  Most people give me an old laptop along with its power cord, and that's about it. If you have a carrying case you are not using, please contact me and I'll gladly pick it up. I also need more donations of used laptops. It would be great if they work, but I realize I can't be fussy about this. I will do my best to make parts from broken machines into whole working machines. Also, I really only want machines that have run or are running Windows XP. This is a statement about age of the machine more than anything else.

Finally, I want to carry this further. The RMH may not have a great need in terms of numbers, so any machines I have more than the RMH needs I will begin to use at other charities that have residents who can make use of the technology.