Ad Hoc worked with Adam Robinson, a friend of the company and founder of Govplace, and Global Volunteers to get the laptops to Poland. Adam and his family packed up all 30 laptops and brought them on the journey to Wiśniew, a town of 6,000 people east of Warsaw, as part of a volunteer trip organized through Global Volunteers. Adam and the other volunteers organized a week-long summer camp for a group of Ukrainian refugees aged 8 to 14 as a way to have fun in the summer and provide the kids with training on using the laptops.
For many of the kids, this was their first computer and the first time their family had reliable internet access since leaving Ukraine. Adam and the other volunteers worked in pairs with the kids to set up the computers so they could start using them.
“At first, the kids thought they were just getting to use the computers during the camp,” Adam said. “When they found out they got to take the computers home…they looked like they were holding gold bars.”
Since leaving Ukraine, many of the kids have struggled to keep up their studies in their native language. The hope is that with these laptops, the children can continue their studies in Ukrainian while connecting with other refugees across the world. Adam also hopes that these computers can offer a way for older family members to explore remote work opportunities that could pay more than the manual labor jobs available locally.
Beyond setting up the laptops, Adam and the Global Volunteers group also put on a week of summer camp events that drew more and more kids from the village as the week went on. The kids roasted smores, jumped in a bounce house, played billiards, ate cotton candy, and ended the week with a big water balloon fight outside.
Ad Hoc is so glad that the laptops our team members are no longer using could go to such a good cause. Thank you to Ad Hoc’s IT team, Adam Robinson and his family, the other volunteers, and Global Volunteers for making this connection happen and bringing joy and opportunity to these children half a world away from our team.
