Daily air strikes and bombings in Eastern Ukraine mean that physical education in schools is dangerous. Many school buildings have been bombed and destroyed. Pupils and teachers either work from home or bomb shelters. In other words, they are in great need of IT equipment, especially laptops.
Following an initiative by staff at the Faculty of Medicine, UiO is now making arrangements enabling all units to donate work PCs and other IT equipment to schools in Ukraine.
How do you go about donating?
If you have functioning IT equipment that is going to be phased out anyway, contact your line manager for formal clarification. The local IT manager, who is familiar with the donation scheme, will then ensure that the hard drive is deleted in a proper manner.
Transport of equipment at UiO
After the deletion of hard drive(s), and after other IT security issues have been taken care of, IT managers can order further transport from the Estate Department through Logistics and Reuse (formerly Mail Services). They will transport the equipment to a reception point at Ullev?l.
Two committed employees
It was last November that Elisabeth Kolflaath Semprini and Tor Henry Wold at the Faculty of Medicine decided to start collecting PCs and other IT equipment for the Ukrainian school sector.
Semprini is an adviser at Program planning, Research support and Communication at the Institute of Clinical Medicine. She has been involved in several forms of donation and aid work towards Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022.
– Due to close cooperation with the Ukrainian embassy in Norway, I received a direct inquiry about the possibility of helping Ukraine's primary school sector with IT equipment for use in remote learning, she says.
A great willingness to help
Semprini quickly came up with the idea of involving colleagues and management at the Faculty of Medicine. She talked to Wold, then they got thumbs up from both the faculty dean and Rector Svein St?len.
– No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. This also applies to UiO as an institution. As such, it was not difficult to say yes when Elisabeth and Tor Henry asked for help to involve the entire university, he says.
– Everyone we have asked for advice and assistance at UiO has been so positive and willing to contribute. It has been incredibly fun. We are here today, with this donation scheme in place, thanks to colleagues on all levels of the university, says Wold, who is IT manager at the Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Clinical Medicine.
Transport, reception, and distribution in Ukraine
The fundraising work takes place in collaboration with the Ukrainian Embassy in Norway, the Ukrainian Association in Norway (Norwegian and Ukrainian) and the voluntary organization PUTE (Norwegian only).
– Depending on financial support, which is also donation-based, they try to send at least one truck a week from Oslo to Ukraine via Poland. The recipient in Ukraine is the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and other stakeholders in the school sector, who will distribute the IT equipment to whatever primary and secondary schools need it the most, explains Semprini.
Questions about the donation scheme?
Contact Semprini and Wold at: pcforukraina@uio.no