Lou August, President, Wilderness Technology Alliance said, “By tapping into each other’s strengths AFTRR partners can overcome our own weaknesses – and bring a whole lot more Christmas cheer!” The story below is a perfect example of benefiting through collaboration.
During the coldest day of the year on December 12, 2017 AFTRR members VA STAR of Woodbridge Virginia and Wilderness Technology Alliance of Washington DC completed their collaborative second pickup of equipment from two different sources in their area.
Chuck Drake of VA STAR and Lou August of Wilderness Technology combined their efforts and their resources to pick up nearly 400 i5 and i7 laptops and desktops from Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Both AFTRR members have a goal of preparing many of these units for distributions to eligible families in northern Virginia and DC and Maryland prior to the Christmas Holidays. Some units will be gifted to the Briya School in Washington D.C. while some others are targeted for Clark County School in VA.
Both AFTRR organizations coordinated their efforts with Richard Creal of GSA for the FEMA laptops.
While this coordinated effort was underway, WTA also contributed monitors, keyboards and mice to the VA STAR program so an additional 50 desktops systems could be completed for distribution, while Virginia Star provided WTA with 41 desktop system units from other sources to match-up with the surplus of monitors, keyboards and mice the WTA currently has, allowing WTA to distribute many more desktop computers this holiday season.
Chuck Drake of VA STAR is in need of 100 laptop hard drives for some of the FEMA devices and is looking for sources of low cost 120 GB or larger units. Please contact Chuck at Drakecd@pwcs.edu.
