Students4Student Call for Donations

With this appeal for donations, we are launching the next major project in our association. As you may know, our activities in Africa began around 12 years ago. Since then, together with the Ministry of Health (MOH), we have installed HITA PC labs throughout Ghana. We have now set up almost 40 HITA PC Labs in high schools, training centers and universities. We were originally interested in the question of how "adequate" technologies could be used to support training in the health professions in developing countries. The basis for this was that the major telecommunications providers have now equipped countries such as Ghana with the latest mobile phone technology, which enables a wide range of potential applications. Internet reception via mobile devices is available almost everywhere. As we realized over time, we often lack a basic infrastructure for our projects. We therefore had to change our aid strategy. We first have to provide a sustainable information and communication technology infrastructure in order to be able to improve training at all. Over the years, we have realized that the earlier these structures are available, the greater our chances of success, especially with girls. We have learned that if we want to support the teaching/learning processes with digital media and tools, we have to start by building the technical infrastructure. The Ghanaian education and health system lacks the economic means to build or maintain such an infrastructure, not least because of the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine. Especially in developing and emerging countries, the risk of the "digital divide" is omnipresent and particularly dramatic. The mission of HITA e.V. is therefore to support the education of pupils and students at high schools, colleges and universities in Africa in this project and with this appeal for donations. In the near future, we will need around 1400 PCs and laptops to successively modernize the computers currently installed. We need a further 200 computers to set up new HITA PC labs, e.g. for the Catholic University in Fiap-re/Sunjany (CUG) in the Bono region and for the partner school of our project partner (Carlo Mierendorff School), Mawuko Senior Girls High School in Ho in the Volta region.  

In second place are the costs: new devices are simply far too expensive for us. For a PC or laptop that once cost 1000 euros, we can buy 8-10 PCs after four years without having to accept any serious or noticeable loss of performance. We are often asked how we can ensure that personal or even company data does not fall into criminal hands in Africa. Who hasn't received some strange pishing mails from Nigeria? Many potential donors are afraid of precisely this scenario and therefore do not want to donate computers. We would like to point out the following: data protection has top priority in our refurbishing activities, i.e. the reconditioning of donated used hardware. We carry out certified data erasure on all devices that are donated to us at the end of their first period of use. On the one hand, this is necessary to ensure that no one can reconstruct sensitive private or company data without authorization, and on the other hand, we can guarantee the future users of our used PCs and laptops that the computers are free of malware. On request, you will receive proof that such data has been deleted. For large donations, we also offer to carry out the data erasure on your premises. We hope that we have been able to convince you with our arguments. The nurses and midwives, the pupils and students in Ghana will thank you for it. With your help, you are directly supporting the Ghanaian education and healthcare system. Please get in touch with us (spenden@hita-ev.org), regardless of whether you want to donate a single computer or hundreds of computers. How else can you get involved? Please contact the email address above if you would like to donate a computer or laptop yourself or if you can make contact with other people, companies or organizations who can or would like to donate computers or other components. We also need stackable plastic boxes (e.g. Euronorm 600x400mm) for storing the donations. Used baker's crates or similar are suitable for this purpose. For the logistics process within the school, we are also looking for trolleys and pallet trucks or sack trucks that would make the work easier for the pupils and for us. It would be great if you could also contact us in this regard. Thank you very much!