Victoria Park Lions Club has been refurbishing and donating old computers to schools in Africa and to programs in Perth.

The not-for-profit organisation receives old desktop computers and laptops from businesses and schools all over Perth.

The team then recruits the help of students from North Metropolitan Tafe to clear and re-image the computers giving them a new life, ready to be re-used.

Lesmurdie Senior High School is one of the many to donate their old computers to the club and made its second donation in July.

Lesmurdie ICT coordinator Brad Robinson said: “We always try to recycle products and devices where we can. We don’t like waste as a school.” The computers donated have now been refurbished, packaged, and sent.

Lions club member Diane Taylor said the team had just sent a shipment to Zambia to the Miracle Powers Ministry, a school in desperate need of resources. With more than 60 per cent of the population in Zambia living under the poverty line, donations like this are essential to educating the children.

Lesmurdie not only donated the desktop computers that were sent to Africa but also 60 MacBook laptops that were given a new life and donated to the Edmund Rice Foundation, which runs education programs in WA.

“I think it’s a very good cause for students across the world. If we can help each other out, that’s what we want,” Mr Robinson said.

Lesmurdie is now in the process of sending the remaining MacBook’s to a remote indigenous community called Warakurna in WA’s Eastern Goldfields region where they will be distributed to schools in the area.

Mr Robinson said: “We saw value in what we had, and wondered how can we, maybe, help someone else out.”

He encouraged other schools to get involved in the Lions Club program, describing it as convenient, free and something that allowed resources that would have ended up in landfill to go to students in need.

The Lions Club can be contacted through its website or Facebook page. Computers can be dropped off at the facility in Welshpool, and the team can collect bigger loads.

The club also sells some of the refurbished computers to help support the cause. Ms Taylor said: “Our aim is to donate as much as we can back to the public.”