TechHui

Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

Did you get a new computer for Christmas ? When you donate your old computer to Hawaiian Hope, you will help us build computer labs in homeless shelters, help homeless children get their homework done and help their parents become more familiar with technology to get better jobs.

Hawaiian Hope is a non profit organizations that specializes in technology. Our primary focus is in providing technology service to other non profit orgs, and in particular, those serving the homeless population. Part of what Hawaiian Hope does is: using donated computers we build computer labs in homeless shelters and provide computers to people and families to take with them once they move out and find a place to live on their own.

As most of us are well aware, many of the jobs now available can only be applied for by using the internet. As an example, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and many hotel chains no longer accept paper applications, and instead, REQUIRE all job applicants to apply for jobs through their company's website.

Likewise, many school children are routinely assigned homework with the assumption they have a computer at "home" and internet access whenever they want. If you were not aware, Hawaii has over 700 children living in homeless shelters and according to the DOE's own records, Hawaii has over 2,400 children enrolled in schools that are known to be homeless.

Through the efforts of Hawaiian Hope and building our computer labs, we hope to have a positive impact into the lives of these children and their parents, to further their education and find better jobs. We respectfully ask that you join us in helping to address this critical need. ALL donations may be made by contacting us and then dropping the donated items off at our offices at 611 N. King Street. Please schedule your drop off first.

Some of our special needs :
Below is a list of some of our special needs. In addition to other items, these are some items that we rarely receive.

We Need Hard Drives : Hawaiian Hope regularly receives donations of computers and monitors and we greatly appreciate these items. We have discovered however that in the name of "security" many of the computers donated have had their hard drives removed. This leaves us with an unusable piece of hardware that requires us to spend additional money to get it to work. Even 20 Gig drives would be sufficient for our needs in most instances.

We Need Mice : Likewise, while we receive computers, we have found that most people never part with their keyboards and mice as these are very personal items. In the last 50 computers we have received as donations, not one of them had a mouse with it and only 25 had keyboards.

We Need Networking : On only 3 occasions have we received any type of networking equipment, and all 3 were 8 ports or less. The typical computer classroom that we assemble has at least 12 computers. Here is a photo of a classroom with 17 computers. We need hardware, cabling and switches. A typical switch that we use is a "D-Link 24-port 10/100/1000 Switch. "

We need volunteers : We need people willing to help in getting our many donated items working again or simply tuned up. We are also looking for volunteers to help in teaching classes, tutoring and in helping with other areas of the organization.

For more information please contact us at :
808.352.8800 or Curtis // at \\ HawaiianHope // dot \\ org

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Hey Curtis. Mahalo for your continued dedication to improving our community. We provided a link to this post on the front page under "Site Info, Announcements & Things To Do". Best of luck with your endeavors. We wish you a happy and prosperous 2009!

- Dan & Mika
Cool !
Thanks !!!!!!!
Is this group still active? I have laptops to donate but unfortunately no hard drives. You could run them on Linux from a bootable CD-ROM. They need power cords as well.
Hi David !
Yes, very active. We are approaching 350 computers in stock. Laptops would be a GREAT item for us. we have a lot of request for them. Unfortunately, the last 20 laptops we got as "donations" were completely stripped of anything useful. (ram, HD, cd-roms, batteries and wifi cards) so getting some that are only missing hard drives is a great find ! hehehe

Also.. if ANYONE is interested in volunteering in getting some of our donations revamped and put back together, or at least helping us with inventory... we can use some extra help right now. Morning, day or evening.. weekends too..... whatever schedule you might be available... drop me a line and I can get you some details.

Thanks !
Around Christmas, Wal-Mart was selling 2GB Kingston USB sticks for $5. You can boot from these and have space left over for extra data/packages/etc. Obviously the computer has to support boot-from-USB.

David C. Brauer said:
Is this group still active? I have laptops to donate but unfortunately no hard drives. You could run them on Linux from a bootable CD-ROM. They need power cords as well.
Our volunteers are typically here 7 days a week from 9 AM, often till as late as 7 or even 9 PM. I would suggest though to call first before you stop in just in case.Some days its only me here and i have to bail out for meetings. I am attaching a few documents that describe more of what we do and a map to our location. Please feel free to pass on our info to others that you think might be interested in helping too !

Also, we are always looking for volunteers. Now as we are approaching the completed remodeling of our public access computer lab/classroom, we will need even more people to assist with classes, tutoring, monitoring and even tech work.

Brian Russo said:
What hours are you open?
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Yes. this is something that is turning into a big request for us. Sooo many of the non profits we are working with have no forms of backups or procedures in place. whatever is on each computer, is where the data is.. no central server (cant afford them).. even if it is only peer to peer... they have no additional backups of their info. We are working with a few right now to just set up a simple computer with mirrored drives on the network someplace so that automated backups can be made to it on a regular basis.

Brian Russo said:
but with 1tb drives at $90 you could build a half decent raid 1+0 for $500 and have 2tb mirrored.
Hi Curtis,

Please give me your number so I can make arrangements to deliver the items. I also have mice, keyboards and monitors which I am happy to donate.

Curtis J. Kropar said:
Hi David !
Yes, very active. We are approaching 350 computers in stock. Laptops would be a GREAT item for us. we have a lot of request for them. Unfortunately, the last 20 laptops we got as "donations" were completely stripped of anything useful. (ram, HD, cd-roms, batteries and wifi cards) so getting some that are only missing hard drives is a great find ! hehehe

Also.. if ANYONE is interested in volunteering in getting some of our donations revamped and put back together, or at least helping us with inventory... we can use some extra help right now. Morning, day or evening.. weekends too..... whatever schedule you might be available... drop me a line and I can get you some details.

Thanks !
Excellent !

Thank you for your continued support and interest !

808.352.8800
Hi Curtis,

I'm still waiting on a return call to set up delivery. Please call me at 779-5401.

Dave Brauer

Curtis J. Kropar said:
Excellent !

Thank you for your continued support and interest !

808.352.8800
Is this organization still active?
Bob Pulgino said:
Is this organization still active?

Very active.

In fact within the next month we are opening our first public access internet cafe. Attached is a PDF File with teh inforamtion
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