Shawna Bleecker

Capital Journal staff

PIERRE — From large corporations across the country, refurbished computers are making their way to five South Dakota homes in the near future.

Redemtech, a computer refurbishing company out of Columbus, Ohio, recently held a Serious Good contest where they are donating 35 nearly-new computers to 10 organizations across the country — and The South Dakota Head Start Association is one of them.

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The Head Start association came in the top five with more than 17,000 votes and will receive five computers this month.

“Essentially the Serious Good contest is the brand of our philanthropic efforts related to technology and the redistribution of technology into non profits and organizations that otherwise wouldn’t have it,” Executive Vice President of Redemtech Jill Vaske said. “We are trying to connect our supply of corporate-generated used equipment that has been professionally refurbished and deliver it to folks to scale their good works.”

Redemtech put out a call to various clients on Twitter and the cause spread like wildfire from there.

“The contest asked for participants to name nonprofits that could use computers to facilitate their mission and what they would do with those computers,” Vaske said.

Nominations from across the country flooded the social medium.

“Those nominations were culled down to 10 finalists based on the range of missions and geographies and what we felt were the most significant organizations in terms of what they were attempting to accomplish,” Vaske said. 

Those 10 nominations were posted for a voting poll on the Redemtech Web site. The top five organizations will each receive five computers and rest will each receive two.

“We are very excited,” executive director of the State Head Start Association Buddy Steiner said. “We had a lot of support.”

The early education program plans to give a computer to five needy families in South Dakota. Who gets the computers will be based on an application and board of directors review process.     

“We will open this up to the 16 Head Start programs and have them nominate families who they think would be good candidates,” Steiner said.

And he plans to sweeten the deal for the families.

“In the coming months I will be contacting various other organizations, telecom or software companies,” Steiner said. “We are looking for people interested in providing to this cause and providing something we can contribute in addition to the computer.