Technology center offers refurbished comptuers Wednesday
BROWNSVILLE – Twenty refurbished computers will be on sale Wednesday during an open house at the Brownsville Youth Technology Center. Students from Brownsville Area High School have rebuilt the computers that have been donated to the program by Westmoreland County Community College.
“They have to go through the hard drives and see what needs to be fixed. They go through to see if there are any viruses or bugs, or anything that needs to be fixed, then they reprogram it,” said Don Bartowick, the Communities in Schools supervisor of the Brownsville program.
The program is housed in the former borough building, also known as the Gazalie Building, at the corner of Market Street and Albany Road. Bartowick said the open house will run from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. Wednesday, giving members of the public a chance to meet the staff, see the center, enjoy refreshments and even buy one of the computers.
“These are in good shape, but we don’t want to overprice them because they were donated,” Bartowick said.
Bartowick said WCCC donated about 70 used computers to the program, so there are still plenty for future students to work on.
Bartowick said the refurbished computers come with a floppy disc drive and a CD burner, a Windows XP operating system and an anti-virus program. The computers are selling for $185 each. Buyers will need to add their own software programs.
Funds raised through the computer sales will go back into the Youth Technology program, Bartowick said.
“The kids next year will decide how best to use it,” Bartowick said.
As part of the program, the students are learning how to set up and run a business through Junior Achievement’s Inspiration program.
The Youth Technology Center is open from 2:30 until 4:30 Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Bartowick said that in addition to the Junior Achievement activities and an hour of computer restoration instruction from Ike Polacek of Elmo’s Computers in Brownsville, they also receive an hour of on-line academic remediation through the Keys to Work program.
Funding for the afterschool program is provided through the Workforce Investment Board of Westmoreland and Fayette counties, Bartowick said.