A laptop for a lifetime

Protime donates laptops to vulnerable students.

The Corona-crisis hits us all very hard, we have to fight for toilet paper, are no longer allowed outside and count down the days to when we can all stand at the coffee machine with our colleagues again. But there are groups in our society where this period is hitting even harder ... and those are the families that cannot afford all the things we sometimes take for granted.

Children from underprivileged families often do not have a computer to follow the teacher's tasks online like their classmates, or just relax with a nice video or game. For them, CAW (Centre for General Welfare in Antwerp) made an appeal to its network of entrepreneurs to donate laptops. A call that Protime was only too happy to answer. 

Protime & CAW: more than laptops

As a software supplier for time registration, it is in our DNA to make time as valuable as possible. We have been doing this for years by not just donating money, but time to charity. Not just any charity, to organisations that are committed to the welfare and future of our society: our children. 

That's why Protime has donated laptops to underprivileged children before, and is happy to do so again in these times of lockdown by preparing 8 laptops for donation to the Ohana family shelter this week. Next week another shipment will follow! 

Computers for children

All too often we don't think about it, but there are a lot of families who don't have the luxury of being safely locked up in their home with a laptop for every member of the family. 

“We have several teams with ambulatory workers going on home visits. They see a lot of families who don't have the own resources to buy laptops.” - Eva Mangelschots, General Manager at CAW Antwerpen

In the CAW shelters for women and families there is also a great need for laptops. These families are often here because of intra-family violence and have been punished even more severely than most of us, because we now deny them the only thing they have left and that is social contact. In these centres laptops are normally shared, which is no longer possible in this situation.  

“Life is becoming increasingly digital for vulnerable people, too.”

Hence CAW's warm appeal to companies to donate their old but still functioning laptops to these vulnerable families, in order not only to reduce the learning gap, but also to give them the right to relaxation and digital social contact like every child in their class. Protime is happy to offer a helping hand to these needy families. 

“Every week that a child doesn't get an education is a week lost.”

Minister of Education Ben Weyts (N-VA) is also committed to this initiative: Ten Thousand Laptops Wanted for Vulnerable Students​(HLN news archive - Tienduizend laptops gezocht voor kwetsbare leerlingen)

With thanks to Eva Mangelschots, Managing Director CAW Antwerp.