Tech donation to German school
Diverting office equipment from landfill to the local community
Freshfields' Hamburg team has donated 112 of the office's computers to a local school after the equipment was decommissioned as part of the firm’s digital transformation.
When a member of the Hamburg office management team Riklef Schuette discovered the desktop computers were to be replaced, he considered our pledge to manage our firm’s environmental impact and looked for a more environmentally friendly alternative to landfill. Riklef found a local school that could reuse and repurpose some of the equipment.
‘Schools can often be slow in adapting to the fast-paced digitisation of society and lack good IT equipment, but it’s important that children are able to access this equipment and learn the digital skills needed in modern life and work,’ Riklef says. ‘The school is in one of the most deprived areas of Hamburg and my old schoolmate is the headmaster there, so I asked him. The school’s IT-servicer was very happy to receive the computers, which were much more modern than anything else they had. Our donated computers are in good shape so they can make a real change in the children’s everyday lives.’
Headmaster Björn Lengwenus adds: ‘Most of our pupils don’t have a computer at home so we are very happy to have these computers in our classrooms where everyone can benefit from them.’
The donation also helps support the communities we work in, repurposing our resources to benefit those less privileged, as well as reflecting our sustainability drive.
As Riklef says: ‘We should all always be considering how our choices could benefit our communities.’
