Bruce Buckelew, director of Oakland Technology Exchange-West, or OTX-West (located in the Prescott-Oakland Point Neighborhood), joined Mayor Ron Dellums Tuesday at deFremery Park Recreation Center in West Oakland to highlight the effort, as children worked in a 10-computer lab inside.
"Our dedication is to end the digital divide in Oakland," said Buckelew, who founded OTX-West 15 years ago and said the group has refurbished more than 30,000 computers for Oakland families, schools and nonprofit groups since the founding.
In all, more than 200 computers donated by the Port of Oakland have been installed in 20 recreation centers across Oakland, after OTX-West refurbished them, Buckelew said. When the project is finished, every Oakland recreation center will have computers with Internet connections, officials said.
And these aren't low-quality machines: Buckelew said they're Pentium 4 Dell computers, with Windows XP Pro and Google Earth, among other applications.
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