Recent Shipment to Peace Corps in Sénégal
World Computer Exchange has shipped computers to Peace Corps volunteers inBolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Malawi, Moldova, Philippines, Senegaland Tanzania. This is just one of the many stories of how Peace Corps volunteers have helped connect WCE.
Watch the YouTube video by one of the Peace Corps volunteers about this project Senegal.
191 computers for schools inn Sénégal were shipped from WCE Chicago in October 2009 to help connect 10,436 youth in 17 schools and youth centres assisted by 9 Peace Corps Volunteers that were delivered by the Peace Corps country office. For this shipment, the Ambassador of the USA to Senegal was the consignee.
The Peace Corps country director, Christopher Hedrick arranged for safe space for the sorting of the computers into the amounts for each school and arranged for the delivery of the computers to each site as Peace Corps cars are making their regular rounds.
WCE works through a network of 570 vetted Partners in 71 developing countries. Partners in each country are assisted by one or two or our 230 volunteer Programme Officers. Our lead Programme Officer for Sénégal is Lettie Heer of Louisville, Kentucky, USA was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sénégal from 2002 to 2004. She spends part of each year in Sénégal. During her last visit, she met with representatives of the Peace Corps country office and some Peace Corps Volunteers to discuss for the shipment that previously arrived adn plan for a next shipment. This past shipment was a change in the way that WCE usually works with Peace Corps. When WCE has worked with Peace Corps in many other countries, there has only been one prior shipment (El Salvador) where the Peace Corps country office, headed by Mike Wise, acted as the consignee handling the details of the container's arrival from the port. WCE has made 20 shipments of computers to schools assisted by Peace Corps Volunteers in: Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Malawi, Moldova, Philippines, Sénégal and Tanzania.
In Sénégal, nine Peace Corps Volunteers found that the 16 schools that they assist were interested in receiving working used Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 computers. They gathered funds from their communities and then also encouraged their friends and families to make tax-deductible donations to WCE. One of the PCVs recently posted the following: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=7306&uid=2224131220
For this past shipment, Lettie led other WCE volunteers in the Sponsor Campaign to raise inside of the USA, 1/3 of the funds needed to cover the WCE sourcing and shipping costs. Volunteers from the WCE Baltimore/Washington Chapter assisted her in raising $5,014. When WCE ran a "Friends and Family" online fund raiser in June 2009, eight of the 50 donors gave to support this shipment and their donations were generously matched by an anonymous donor. A big assist came from a team of volunteer from Booz Allen Hamilton who helped hold a fund raiser in a restaurant in Morgan Adams part of Washington DC - that also donated to this Sponsor Campaign.
In her recent annual visit to Sénégal in February of 2010, Lettie again met with Peace Corps representatives to begin to plan for WCE's third shared and Sponsored container of 200 computers to help connect more rural schools in Sénégal.
A Peace Corps Volunteer about to receive 23 computers from this shipment for the schools she is assisting said "The opportunity to offer 2,000 children computer and Internet training is incredible, and I genuinely think it will offer them a better future. I can’t really say in words how wonderful it would be for them to have this opportunity. Senegal is a poorly educated country; students who are still in school at the middle and high school level are committed to receiving an education. In today’s world, that requires computers."
