Transatlantic law firm and valued Nascence project partners, Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD), have generously donated 20 laptops to Bristol Sport Foundation (BSF) to distribute to schools to help vulnerable families throughout Greater Bristol.
The donation has been facilitated by BSF’s Nascence Project, our business and community engagement programme which works in partnership with others to have the greatest impact in the communities of Greater Bristol, and local charity partner, DigiLocal who prepped the devices for community use.
The devices have been distributed to two of our partner schools situated in areas of high deprivation, namely Wansdyke School in Hartcliffe and Summerhill Academy in St. George where a number of children have been identified as lacking access to digital devices. This generous donation from WBD will go a long way to ensuring that these young people’s educational needs are met and they are not left behind.
WBD were also kind enough to facilitate the donation of a large number of books from Bishop Road Primary School to BSF. These will be distributed to Jacari which is an innovative, award-winning charity providing free, 1:1 tutoring for disadvantaged migrant, asylum-seeking, and refugee children aged 6-16 who have English as an Additional Language (EAL) and are struggling at school.
The laptop donations were part of WBD’s firm wide effort to support the most disadvantaged families and their children with home-schooling throughout the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. In total the firm donated 125 laptops across the UK including to local schools, charities and organisations working to support local communities.
Jon Bower, partner and head of responsible business at WBD’s Bristol office, commented: “We’re thrilled to have collaborated with BSF to help families who have not had the ability or digital infrastructure to support their children with home schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a high level of disadvantaged children in our area who are very much at risk of falling behind in their learning and so it was important for us to step-up and support those who have been most impacted by the school closures. We hope that access to the laptops, books and resources we have made available have supported the children’s learning and have made remote education an enjoyable experience for children and parents alike.”
Tom Monks, Head of Programmes at BSF, said: “We are hugely appreciative of Womble Bond Dickinson’s laptop donation. Their donation affords us the opportunity to help bridge the digital divide by supporting the most vulnerable families at our partner schools, Summerhill Academy and Wansdyke Primary School.”
About the Foundation’s Digital Inclusion Project: As part of our wider ‘Digital Transformation Project’ we are acutely aware that there are families within our communities who do not have access to a device that supports our content. To address this, our digital inclusion offering works with the support of our corporate partners who donate devices that we prepare for community use, pre-loaded with the BSF app and web app. Using our extensive community network, we identify families in the most urgent need and donate the devices for use.
We cannot solve this issue overnight, but each donated device makes a real difference and is very much appreciated. Please contact Paul Glanville to find out how your organisation can make a donation to this important appeal and how we match every donation with clearly identified urgent need throughout Greater Bristol
