Black Country-based training group BCTG Group has donated eight fully refurbished laptops to needy families in the East Midlands.

BCTG, which supports almost 10,000 young people and adults with training each year, handed over the computers to Home-Start North West Leicestershire, which helps families with young children who are going through challenging times.

The laptops, which would otherwise have been scrapped, were overhauled by business IT specialists Declaro Support Ltd, based in Stourbridge, which devoted two to three hours of expertise to each machine free of charge.

Pamela Moretta, manager at Home-Start North West Leicestershire, said: “To receive donations of expensive equipment like this is the equivalent of pennies from heaven for our charity.

“Each laptop will go to a family that desperately needs one to allow children to do their homework, to help parents look for jobs and enable them to access financial help.

“We really appreciate the gift from BCTG and also want to thank Declaro Support for generously refurbishing the machines free of charge.”

Sarah Matthews, group operations manager at BCTG, said: “One of our staff volunteers for Home-Start and was discussing how the families they help often struggle to do things we all take for granted because they have no access to technology.

“We realised that we had a number of old machines that were no longer being used, and so we asked Declaro Support, the IT company we use, how easy it would be to service them before donating them to charity.

“Declaro decided they also wanted to be part of our efforts to help this charity and did all the necessary work for nothing as their own donation.

“We very grateful to everyone as Declaro who helped and everyone at BCTG is pleased that the end result will be helping families to access the education, jobs, financial help and other services they need.”

Declaro Support explained that it sorted through more than two dozen old laptops at BCTG and found eight that would be suitable for Home-Start to use.

Lee Matthews, technical director at Declaro Support, said: “BCTG is one of our customers, and after discussing this with them we decided it would be great to help out rather than seeing these laptops simply discarded to landfill or shoved to the back of a cupboard.

“I am a firm believer in karma, and that if you do things out of the goodness of your heart then good things will also happen to you.

“We chose the best out of the old bunch and got our apprentice Craig Russell to spend about a week of his time over the period of a month to restore them to full working order.”

Mr Matthews added: “We’re delighted they are going to such a good cause and were really pleased to have played our part.”

Ends (467 words)

For further information, please contact:

Chris Luty, Chief Executive Officer,

BCTG Group, European Business Park, Taylors Lane, Oldbury, B69 2BN. Tel: 0121 544 6455

Prepared and issued by Andy Skinner at ASAP PR – 07990 978257

Note to editors:

BCTG Group is a West Midlands-based training organisation which supports almost 10,000 young people and adults each year.

The group has ten sites in Birmingham, the Black Country, Staffordshire and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and also includes Performance Through People (PTP Training), The Apprenticeship Works, BCTG Ltd, Eurosource Solutions and Further Training.

Overall, the group offers 166 different types of apprenticeship, 84 different adult upskilling and reskilling courses and 27 pre-apprenticeship programmes for 16 to 18-year-olds. These include everything from healthcare and early years care to construction, engineering, manufacturing and logistics, through to business skills in IT, management and team leading.