The Turing Trust

About us

The Turing Trust was set up in 2009 by Alan Turing´s closest family in honour of his remarkable legacy. Today we’re keeping Alan´s legacy alive by providing quality technology and IT training to schools in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our operations in the UK help provide training and volunteering opportunities, and promote the transition towards a circular economy through the reuse of electrical and educational equipment.

Mission
The Turing Trust aims to promote education and training through the use of information technology in sub-Saharan Africa. By reusing equipment we aim to provide training opportunities and skills development both in Africa and the UK whilst reducing waste and supporting a more sustainable and environmentally friendly society.

Our work:
• In Africa: The Turing Trust began working in Africa in 2009 with a view to making students in rural Africa more employable. We want to give students the best chance to break out of the rural poverty cycle through teaching IT and vocational skills. By outfitting schools with refurbished resources from the UK and providing teacher training, we can optimise the learning environment and help an individual learn a trade or become computer literate, making them more employable and financially independent. We are workimg in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.
• In UK: We provide an IT reuse solution throughout the UK to both businesses and households. We believe that reusing technology is better than recycling it as reuse contributes to a circular economy, enabling students to benefit from older technologies. Our Scottish Focus: In Scotland The Turing Trust focuses on improving the local social impact of our operation. Through our Volunteering scheme we´re helping improve career prospects by teaching skills to those who help us out. Our volunteer-run IT processing operations are based in Edinburgh, where we ensure all donations are managed responsibly. Our UK hub is based in Edinburgh and it´s where we process all computers before they get shipped to our Partners across Africa. Our volunteers here help organise and co-ordinate these shipments and are essential to processing/wiping your donations securely. They receive training upon enrolling with us which has helped our volunteers improve their career prospects and develop professionally.
• The Turing Trust e-library: We believe that software is equally important to the quality hardware we provide. Therefore every computer that is donated to one of our partner schools is equipped with a wide range of e-learning resources. These include: Wikipedia for schools; RACHEL library of information; Khan Academy; SCRATCH; Health and hygiene guides; How-to guides created by Dr. Bernard Poole, which help the user understand how to use both Microsoft and Libre Office; Anti-virus software. What makes a huge different is that all the resources we make available are 100% accessible offline. This is essential in the rural areas that we work in where access to the internet is difficult and can be prohibitively expensive. We are always looking for ways to improve and find new ways to facilitate learning in remote places.
• The SolarBerry: This is a self-financing, community-owned off-grid computer lab powered by solar energy with energy-efficient Raspberry Pi computers.

Georgia Strachan is a Fundraising & Communications Manager at the Turing Trust.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.