Campaign wants to give refurbished laptops to Salisbury children
Wiltshire Digital Drive is looking to expand into the city.
The project aims to provide low-income families in Wiltshire with a laptop or tablet to help young people with their school work.
Wiltshire Digital Drive takes older pieces of kit and refurbishes them to be handed back out to those who need it, getting help from Wiltshire Council and local schools to find the families that could benefit.
150 laptops have been distributed so far, with another 100 ready to go.
They've now been given £5,000 by the Wiltshire Community Foundation's Coronavirus Response Fund, so they can expand the project and support families in the Salisbury area.
Director Natalie Sherman said:
"We are making a concerted effort to get applications and donations from Salisbury. We want the project to cover the whole of the county, we are really passionate about making it for everyone's benefit.
"We know lots of people and companies have old tech sitting around that they don't use. They could make a huge difference to a young person's life."
The project was started by company Priority IT and is now a community interest company.
They've had financial donations to help cover the cost of the refurbishments, which is around £20 to £30 per machine, and they recycle any computers that aren't salvageable.
Each laptop is loaded up with Microsoft packages and anti-virus software to make sure they can be used by families straight away.
Natalie Sherman says they've had some amazing feedback from those benefitting too:
"There have been some really touching stories, like children who were going into lockdown with five siblings and two working parents and had nothing to do their coursework on or being unable to apply for university places.
"We had other children who had been removed from their homes because of abusive relationships between their parents and had to leave everything behind."
Wiltshire Community Foundation's Coronavirus Response Fund has so far given out £925,000 as grants to more than 200 groups across the county to help them cope through the Covid-19 crisis.
Joint chief executive Fiona Oliver said:
"This is yet another group born out of meeting a specific need thrown up by the pandemic who will now be helping many more people in the long term and we are very pleased to be able to fund it."