ONTARIO COMPUTERS DESTINED FOR AFRICA STOLEN London Free Press - Local News - African children will go without following robbery:

African children will go without following robbery
Sun, February 25, 2007

The 250 computer towers were headed for villages and schools after being donated by the Lambton school system.

By KELLY PEDRO, SUN MEDIA

About 250 computer towers destined for African villages and schools were stolen from a Parkhill barn, Middlesex OPP said yesterday.

Police believe the thieves may not have known what the computers were going to be used for when they took them.

"Whenever anybody steals anything that's donated in good faith and going to a good cause, that's pretty low," Const. Doug Graham said.

Mike Ling, chief executive of Green Fryd Computers, noticed the towers were missing when he went to the barn on West Corner Drive on Thursday morning.

"It bothers me that the individual didn't turn to me and say, 'I could use a computer.' I've never said no to anybody," he said.

Green Fryd Computers is a non-profit company that refurbishes old computers and electronic equipment and donates them to local and international communities.

Whatever isn't salvageable is sold for scrap to cover the company's meagre costs.

Ling has distributed refurbished computers across Southwestern Ontario, Jamaica and Chile since late 2002.

"We do our best to get things back out into our community. So many computers are wasted and end up in landfills," Ling said.

All the recycled computers and equipment the company gets are donated.

The stolen computer towers came from schools in Lambton County and most were IBM Pentium 3 towers with Windows 98 software, Ling said.

"They were perfect computers for e-mail and to do normal everyday stuff," he said.

Ling was going to drop off the towers this week in Toronto, where they would sit in a container until courier companies flying overseas with spare room on their planes would drop them off.

Ling said he'd like the computer towers -- worth only about $1,000 in scrap -- back.

Donated computers and equipment have gone missing from the company before, but never in such a high quantity.

"I don't think it was done overnight," he said.

Police ask anyone with information to call 1-888-310-1122.