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The week in review [2016-05-30]

Lots of things on the to-do list this week, some of which actually got accomplished.  The most exciting was meeting with Judy and Denis Severson of The School Fund – more on that below.  We also heard just this morning that the first four balikbayan boxes arrived at Daanbantayan National High School.  Those boxes left here on March 23rd and contained computer equipment purchased from the Silicon Valley Chapter of the World Computer Exchange (www.worldcomputerexchange.org).  Jade is planning to head up to Daanbantayan this week to begin the cabling, so it’s a wonderful bit of timing that he can also work with Sir Chester to check out the newly arrived equipment.

We were very excited to meet Judy and Denis on Friday.  The School Fund provides scholarships for high school students in developing countries.  The organization uses crowdfunding to link donors in the US to specific students in need of support to continue their education.  As we’ve noted before in the Reneal blog, it doesn’t take many dollars to change a life dramatically in a developing country.  Their work is truly exciting – check it out at www.theschoolfund.org!  Judy oversees the Tanzania scholarship program, so we had a marvelous time comparing notes about the challenges and joys of working there.  The School Fund has actually installed a couple of computer labs too, so students can journal on-line and communicate with their benefactors.  We look forward to a follow-up meeting with them to explore a possible collaboration.

Having the first wave of balikbayan boxes arrive is always a thrill.  It really kicks up the excitement a notch for the upcoming projects!  The other 28 boxes should continue to trickle in between late June and mid-August.  The timing is especially nice for these first four boxes, since Jade will be in Daanbantayan on Wednesday to start the cabling.  There are two more boxes still on the way for Daanbantayan, but it will be great that they can get this equipment checked out and set up while Jade is there.

I got one other thing done this week that has been nagging at me.  We had received a donation of Thinkpad laptops a while back, and I had a stack of eleven of them that I could not get to boot to the server.  They would start booting and then just hang up.  By doing a very tedious comparison of every BIOS option with a working unit, I finally found what the problem was.  At last!  It is nice to have those units now sitting in the “ready to go” category for 2017.  We continue to seek donations of computer hardware that is obsolete in the US but readily usable by high school students in developing countries!