Free Geek, at its core, is a hardware recycler. I found it in Portland, Oregon, and was fortunate enough to get a spot as an intern at the Help Desk. I am honestly surprised I got the spot since I had no recent IT experience going into it. Fortunately Help Desk is basically just customer service, something I am rather good at. And even better, they provided on the job, hands on training for everything I would need.
Free Geek accepts donations of used (in basically ANY condition... they've found beehives in donated hardware before...) electronics, computers and basically anything with an on-switch. From there, they either reuse components if they work, or if they don't they get broken down to their components and recycled (did you know that a ton of computer waste has more gold in it than a ton of earth from a gold mine?). Re-used components are either reassembled into new, usable computers running Ubuntu, or are sold in their thrift shop for cheap.
Volunteers can earn up to one free computer a year, either by building 5 computers or by volunteering for 25 hours. They accept volunteers of almost any age (minor children need an adult guardian with them. I saw several pairs as I was there and though it was a great way to bond and support kids), and provide them with one of three routes:
- Recycling
- Building
- Interning
Working in recycling basically means you rip apart old stuff and sort it for disposal. I went the Intern and Build routes, but I always through recycling looked like fun. Depending on your physical ability you can do things like rip printers apart (they're not meant to be disassembled), tear down computer chassis or do less strenuous tasks like break down keyboards. Not much ends up in the trash, they are able to recycle the plastics and metals... sometimes at a profit.
Building was a lot of fun for me. They start you at a bench and teach you the basic parts of a computer (RAMBUS vs. SO-DIMM, CD-ROM vs. Hard disk etc. It's very basic, but an excellent spot for a beginner to start). After you can identify all the component pieces they move you onto pre-build, which is where you disassemble computers. Lots of vacuuming is involved! (if you've ever opened a 10 year old computer you know what I mean ). Once it's (relatively) clean, you simply follow a really long flow chart to determine what can be re-used. Basically only stuff that's 1-2 years old is kept, everything else gets moved to recycling. Any components which are damaged (blown capacitors, bent pins etc.) get sent to Advanced Build to be tested and repaired. Everything else that is kept is tested and then used in Build.
Build is the next stage, and teaches you how to perform Quality Assurance (QA) and to build computers from (almost... the CPU and motherboard are already in place) scratch. They have developed a great checklist which teaches you how to put everything together. Given the odd assortment of franken parts sometimes you just have to try different combinations of components before things work (frustrating!).
Once you've built 5 computers you can, if you wish, go onto Advanced Build. Advanced Build is not something I did, but it looked very interesting; you can work on Macs, servers, test electronic components, rebuild motherbuilds etc.
That's all for for now... stay tuned for more information on their Internships! And definitely check out their website.
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