Overhauled computers to supply thousands of pupils and students

"Asf works a lot on projects for Madagascar. This one symbolizes the meeting of two associations with meshing interests, and makes sense upstream and downstream of the chain."

Frédéric Plumas

Since its creation in 2003, Ateliers sans Frontières (ASF) has been drawing on a concept that fills three needs: creating back-to-work jobs for social dropouts; fighting waste by recycling used computers and sports equipment; and, in this way, supporting educational and social projects carried out by nonprofit associations, in the developing countries as well as France.

Upstream, it collects IT hardware discarded by companies but sufficiently recent for satisfactory re-use. The hardware is overhauled in its own workshops by persons in economic difficulty, to whom it transmits highly specific knowhow while offering them the opportunity to rebuild a future. And downstream, it delivers the computers to areas where a large share of the population have no access to these products.

Against deschooling and illiteracy

ASF, alongside the nonprofit OPTA, is launching a product today to supply ready-to-use IT hardware to the technical schools and training centers of eight regions of Madagascar. The country is seriously lagging in the field of education: 41% of school aged children in the cities and 56% in the countryside don't go to school. Adult illiteracy is as high as 12% in the city and 35% in the country .

The national plan "Education for All in 2015" aims to redress this situation. ASF's initiative will help: 410 complete computers, incorporating office software, will be prepared by its employees. They will be shipped to Madagascar, taken over on arrival by OPTA, and then sent on to user associations of the establishments (parents, students, teachers and administration) that will install them between September and December 2010.

Fully aware of the integrity of ASF and the quality of the international outreach projects that it carries out, the Veolia Foundation is again supporting the association. Thanks to these computers, thousands of students will become computer fluent and acquire indispensable skills. And the Secretary of State for Education, Vocational Training and Socioeconomic Development will train supervisors to manage the IT facilities of the schools. One more advantage to perpetuate a socioeconomic, outreach ... and circular project.