Supporting Local By Donating iMacs Across the North-East

When the pandemic struck in early 2020, like most businesses, KOMODO’s team took cover in the safety of our homes - leaving office life behind. Fast forward to 2021 and we’d returned to find we were no longer in need of some equipment, namely our collection of desktop iMacs. As a solution, commercial director Armin Talić suggested we send the iMacs that helped us grow, go elsewhere to do the same. So we did.

KOMODO has been supporting local charities and organisations by donating our surplus iMacs across the North-East.

Supporting tech foundations in the region

What started as a LinkedIn post asking for recommendations snowballed into a host of local organisations, charities and educational institutions sharing the post across social media. With hundreds of comments on the original post, the support was overwhelming.

To help us decide between a lot of worthy destinations for our iMacs, we set out three criteria to narrow down our choice:

1. Those actively creating pathways for young women into coding.

2. Those supporting STEM subjects and tech for young people.

3. Local organisations using technology for good and championing tech in the region.

After looking through every comment, we decided to split the iMacs between three locations to reach out and help as many as we could.

These were:

CoderDojo North-East

CoderDojo was an obvious choice. The volunteer-led organisation works across the UK and globally to promote the development of technical skills and teaching programming languages to young people no matter their background or skill level. The aptly named ‘Dojos’ are skilling up young people with the knowledge they need for a digitally evolving world.

What stood out to us was the CoderDojo Girls Initiative which has taught 60,000 young women to code across the UK, providing them with mentorship and female role models within STEM. Dani Walsh, the CEO (Cheif Education Office!) at CoderDojo North-East is a fantastic example of this in practice and was delighted to receive the iMac ready for her Dojo to open again in October after COVID disruptions.

Cramlington Village Primary School (CVPS)

CVPS are a local primary school that will benefit massively from the additional technology in their classrooms. They are a primary school made up of 35% disadvantaged children who are typically less engaged with computer science and technology.

CVPS emphasises providing STEM education, focusing on areas like computer science. Their computing and STEM provision pushes to include successful and socially diverse female role models in industry.

We couldn’t think of a better way to inspire a new generation of programmers than by helping young people discover technology. For most at CVPS, this will be their first contact with the likes of computer science and our iMacs will make a big difference in those first steps into the world of technology.

Special iApps

Finally, Special iApps are a local charity with an international reach. Co-Founded in 2011 by Beverley & Colin Dean, they created the charity because they couldn’t find suitable apps to teach their son William who has Downs Syndrome and Autism. With their background in web development, they decided to solve this problem.

Now 10 years on, Special iApps has gone on to create educational apps specifically focused on helping children with learning difficulties. They have created award-winning apps that are uncluttered and don’t feature advertising to aid errorless learning. Special iApps benefit massively from donations and founder Beverley Dean said:

“Thank you so much to Komodo for donating the iMac to us. It must have been a difficult choice to choose from all the amazing organisations in the North East doing good. We were in need of another computer in our office as our team has grown and needed up to date IT equipment to help us develop our apps that support children with Special Educational Needs. The iMac will help us test and develop our innovative web apps and keep in touch virtually with other organisations.”

Taking charge of our responsibility

We’re proud to support local charities and organisations in the region and make our mark. We asked commercial director, Armin Talić, why he think this is so important, he said:

“I can't wait to see these machines being used to support the next generation of creatives and developers. We wanted to support the tech ecosystem we exist in and see it flourish. And who knows? Some of the people we support now may come on to work at KOMODO themselves and go on to become leaders in the tech industry.”

We are certain our iMacs have found good homes in our community and cannot wait to hear back from CoderDojo, CVPS and Special iApps to see how they’re getting on!