Good Afternoon,
Wanted to share with you an article from this week’s East Bay Business Times, and encourage you to share your company’s spare computers with a local school. Below is the article about how we did it and the contact information for David Atherton who helped us donote ours. Your company gets a tax write off, the school gets the computers, it’s a win/win…
From the East Bay Business Times
June 25, 2004 print edition
Good Business
Dropout Does Good at School
Joe Pelayo would be the first to admit he wasn’t the world’s greatest student. He dropped out of College Park High School in Pleasant Hill and worked at jobs selling everything from cable TV to vacuum cleaners.
But then he was fortunate to be selected as an interview trainee in an executive recruitment firm. The break led to the founding of his own company in that field 14 years ago at the tender age of 22. His San Francisco business, Joseph Michaels International, has landed clients the likes of The Coca-Cola Co., Sony Corp., Williams-Sonoma Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd. and Cisco Systems Inc.
Not bad for a high school dropout.
But even though school didn’t make the difference for him, Pelayo is making an impact now – at least for some science students at Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, giving their classroom a half-dozen Pentium 486 computers from his office.
Pelayo said he was surprised when he visited the school, which he expected to be filled with up-to-date technology.
“I was picturing a computer at every desk, but obviously that wasn’t the case,” he said. “The classroom I visited had about five computers, and they weren’t exactly state-of-the-art machines.”
It was teacher Jim Richmond’s science classroom, a room that now has computers powerful enough to allow students to create effective and eye-catching graphic presentations for their projects.
Pelayo has become a bit of a proselytizer when it comes to companies donating their old, but still quite functional, technological devices. Thanks to decades of successive waves of budget cuts, many public schools struggle to provide adequate books and even basic classroom materials.
“After we installed our new computer system, the old computers were sitting on a desk in my office,” Pelayo said, quickly adding he’d only used them for a couple of years.
He had thought several times about donating them to a school, but figured it might be a bureacratic hassle. David Atherton, who owns Atherton Consulting in Concord, assured him that would not be the case.
“(Atherton) was a tremendous help because he scrubbed the hard drives nine times to remove our data from the computers,” he said. “He transported them and David installed them.”
Ygnacio Valley High officials wrote him a letter on school stationery stating they’d received the machines.
“I want to encourage more businesses to consider donating their used technology,” Pelayo said. “Since you can get a tax break, it’s a really good deal for them. There are a ton of machines out there, just sitting around gathering dust. It just makes sense for everyone concerned to put them to good use at a school, where they really make a difference for students and teachers.”
Good Business focuses on the good works of business in the East Bay. To comment or suggest column items, contact David Goll at 925-598-1436 or dgoll@bizjournals.com
© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.
Contact information for David Atherton:
David@AthertonConsulting.net
1-925-674-0676.
Donate now and your computers can be in place for the new school year.
Warm Regards,
Joe Pelayo
Joe Pelayo, C.P.C.
Joseph Michaels International
Global Recruiting Solutions
800-786-1099
Email: jpelayo@josephmichaels.com
Website: http://josephmichaels.wpengine.com
One of the top 75 Recruiters in the United States ~ Recruiter Life Magazine