Appeal to give deserving students a head start
by Geraldine Hinter
Financially
and educationally disadvantaged students will benefit from this
year’s annual fundraising appeal through a range of different
support services aimed at helping them to succeed in their studies.
A new aspect of this year’s appeal is the Computer@Home Scheme, which aims to get desktop computers into the homes of financially disadvantaged students. This need was identified partly by the Dropping off the Edge report about disadvantage in Australia, which indicated that computer and internet access in the home was one of the major factors contributing to disadvantage.
In a pilot program run through UniSA’s USANET special access scheme, support and donations were secured from the University and the community to get 13 PCs to disadvantaged students. The initiative was very well received.
From that starting point, Senior Development Officer, Fundraising and Special Projects, Emma Fey (pictured) and colleagues thought to grow the program.
"With the support of our corporate sponsors and generous alumni, we feel that the program could reach the scale of 100 or 200 computers each year and hope to get PCs donated at no charge," Fey said.
"We are approaching UniSA and our corporate partners to see if they can donate their old hardware, which is usually recycled after about three years. This would enable us to secure computers of an acceptable standard and use funds raised to get them refurbished."
The annual appeal also offers initiatives for broader groups of students including scholarships for rural and isolated students and laptops for loan. Students who come from isolated regions face a range of costs that other students don’t have to bear in terms of relocating and having to live away from their family support network.
That’s one area that many of our donors are very passionate about, according to Fey.
"The Laptop for Loan initiative is an existing UniSA program, but there’s a shortage of laptops, so we hope to grow this successful program."
For further information on these programs telephone (08) 8302 0974 or (08) 8302 0964 or visit the UniSA Annual Appeal website.