The Green Computer Poverty-Alleviation initiative, held by China Rural Infoplatform Office of Association of Poverty-Alleviation & Development and Sohu.com, has been officially launched in Beijing.
Children in Hebei and Qinghai, together with people at the launching ceremony in Beijing via video, requested the donation of underutilized computers for poverty-alleviation and to protect the environment. The official website of the initiative was also launched the same time.
Lin Jialai, the vice chairman of China Association for Poverty-Alleviation & Development, stated that the initiative is IOPAD's major public welfare activity for the rural informationization construction, aiming at improving rural schools' computer teaching environment by refitting the underutilized computers from cities into usable "green computers". This can also help in the environmental disposal of e-waste such as computers.
The COO of Sohu.com Gong Yu said that Sohu.com has already signed a long-term donation agreement with CAPAD. Of the first batch of 230 PCs donated in July 2008, 20 have been given to Dachang Hui Autonomous County's Xiadian Primary School in Hebei, and the first Sohu classroom has been built so that more than 40 students can learn about computing. The next donation, according to Gong Yu, will go to Renjiaping Primary School in Beichuan of Sichuan Province.
The Green Computer Poverty-Alleviation initiative was first launched by the IOPAD in March 2008. Dozens of green computer classrooms and rural information service stations have been built in Beijing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Guizhou, Hunan, Anhui, and Sichuan. Microsoft, Intel, China Construction Bank, State Intellectual Property Office, MSN, and China Logistics Company are also among the donors.
