Message From The Founder: John Williams
The wall-of-text version of the story:
Sometime early high school I taught myself Linux and Computer Repair and got pretty darn good at it. To this day I’ve never bought a computer, and my netbook is the only computer I’ve ever received as a gift that worked when it was given to me. At my parents house, I own like 5 laptops and 3 desktops, all of which are usable but have their own quirks, seeing as they all were thrown away at one point. Anyway, I had been fixing computers and giving them away to people for a little while until I thought- hey, I should teach other kids how to do this. So I started up a club at the local high school. We solicited used computer donations from people, I taught club members computer repair, and the computers we successfully repaired were given to our local low-income housing authority. At that point I figured, why don’t I start this type club in more schools? So I founded the Linux Club Coalition Inc, a 501c3 nonprofit (the tax exempt status application was a pain), and started up more Linux Clubs based on the original Needham High School branch. After many hundreds of hours of work, there are 4 self-running Linux Clubs in high schools in the Metro-West Boston area. At some point they will probably all disband, because the new management turnover rate after presidents graduate isn’t that great, but together we’ve probably given out 200 computers, so that’s something.
Sometime early high school I taught myself Linux and Computer Repair and got pretty darn good at it. To this day I’ve never bought a computer, and my netbook is the only computer I’ve ever received as a gift that worked when it was given to me. At my parents house, I own like 5 laptops and 3 desktops, all of which are usable but have their own quirks, seeing as they all were thrown away at one point. Anyway, I had been fixing computers and giving them away to people for a little while until I thought- hey, I should teach other kids how to do this. So I started up a club at the local high school. We solicited used computer donations from people, I taught club members computer repair, and the computers we successfully repaired were given to our local low-income housing authority. At that point I figured, why don’t I start this type club in more schools? So I founded the Linux Club Coalition Inc, a 501c3 nonprofit (the tax exempt status application was a pain), and started up more Linux Clubs based on the original Needham High School branch. After many hundreds of hours of work, there are 4 self-running Linux Clubs in high schools in the Metro-West Boston area. At some point they will probably all disband, because the new management turnover rate after presidents graduate isn’t that great, but together we’ve probably given out 200 computers, so that’s something.