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Carole Mikita ReportingFamilies in need are receiving personal computers from students who built them.
LDS Business College students are still hard at work before the holidays.
The Lion's Den is a computer hardware class at LDS Business College in which the students are already entrepreneurs. They repair and sell some computers, build and donate others to people in need.
Breanne Flanders, LDS Business College student: "It opens my eyes to see what we're doing for people. It helps me learn more about computers, but then also the charity aspect..."
Matthew Scholle, LDS Business College student: "It's helping someone out there that needs a computer and that'll help them advance in their career or in their life."
Businesses, law firms, grocery store chains provide them with everything they need. The monitors, the towers, the printers... all donated by local businesses...and referred to by the students as the "computer salvage yard" part of the classroom.
They acknowledge the catch phrase, "digital divide," which separates those in society who can use computers and those who can't.
Kevin McReynolds, Program Dir., Business Information Systems: "What we're really doing here is called service learning. The idea is for students to go out and give back to the community and get an idea of just how fortunate they are."
Students accompany their advisor, Mark Drennen, to deliver computers to charitable organizations. Today they went to Catholic Community Services where a refugee family of five from Russia was waiting for their very own computer.
Aden Batar, Dir., Immigrant Resettlement Program: "Their children will have much opportunity to learn, to go to the Internet, to do research for school, for whatever they need. And also the parents will have an opportunity to look for better jobs."
It's all in the hands of the students who fix the computers and give them to those who search for the path to new information, and to a new life.
The Lion's Den PC Christmas Computers Project is always looking for donations.
