The Turing Trust

Currie Balerno Rotary have supported the Turing Trust since 2012, when Rotary members Pearl and Andrew Clark met James Turing, an Edinburgh University student and great nephew of Alan Turing.

James set up the Turing Trust after a gap year experience in Ghana, where he saw computing being taught without a single computer. The initial aim was to support Centres for Employable Skills in Ghana in providing the youth of the local communities with quality technical and vocational training.

In Ghana the Trust provided practical support and equipment, including used computers, text books, building tools, and catering and sewing equipment, helping to give young rural people sustainable life skills and allowing them to move away from subsistence farming and poverty. 

From 2015, the focus shifted to Malawi, where the Trust has installed computer labs of 20 computers in each of over 200 schools and other educational establishments.  It now has three bases there in Mzuzu, Llongwe and Blantyre with 12 technical staff serving Northern, Central and Southern Areas respectively installing and servicing the computers. In 2018 four members of Currie Balerno Rotary designed a solar powered mobile classroom/resource centre, to be constructed from a shipping container, and the Turing Trust now has this in place serving a remote community in northern Malawi. For more information on the project Click here

In 2019, the Scottish Parliament debated a motion, tabled by Gordon MacDonald MSP, recognising and commending the work carried out by Currie Balerno Rotary, in partnership with the Turing Trust, in collecting and re-cycling used computers for schools in Africa. The presentation at Holyrood highlighted not only the value of the refurbished computers to the local communities in Africa but also the environmental benefit from re-using discarded computers rather than disposing of them as waste.

In connection with this latter point, we should recognise the work done by ReusingIT, a West Lothian charity set up by former Currie High School boy Ross Cockburn, with whom Currie Balerno Rotary has a close relationship. ReusingIT collects cleans and refurbishes discarded computers to be donated to educational establishments both here and internationally and Ross has donated over 9000 computers to the Turing Trust for onward transmission to Africa.