Rotary Katikati & Ballance Nutrients are sending 60 notebook computers to Vanuatu

Rotary Katikati & Ballance Nutrients are sending 60 notebooks via marine reach to the upper islands in Vanuatu.

They are also installing over a 100 notebooks in Rural schools in BOP and are setting up a computer lab & overhead projector for a woman's & children's refuge on Port Vila.

Farm nutrient co-operative Ballance has donated 70 laptops as part of the Katikati Rotary Club’s project,

‘Computers for the Pacific Islands’.

The project started in 2007 and delivers computers to primary and high schools throughout the Pacific Islands.

Katikati Rotary representative John Buchanan explains that in 2006 Mount Maunganui Rotary Club built a special needs class room at Tutaga Primary School in Savai’i Island, Samoa.

“It was then that we discovered none of the local schools had computers, so Katikati Rotary took up the challenge of co-ordinating the donation and refurbishing of the laptops and ‘Computers for the Pacific Islands’ was born.”

Since 2007, Rotary has been refurbishing computers and delivering them to Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga and the Cook Islands. With the support of Ballance, Rotary is getting close to reaching their goal of delivering 150 computers this year.

So far three of the laptop computers donated by Ballance have been loaded with Windows 7 and sent to Araura College on Aitutaki Island in the Cook Islands, and four more have been delivered to Ekonak Central School in Vanuatu by Katikati Rotary members.