Member Article

Business coach's campaign helps Ukrainian refugee children in Poland access remote education.

Peter Boolkah is a business coach of over 30 years and helps meduim to large businesses scale up.

Peter’s team of six employees work remotely and it has proved to be a highly productive and cost effective way of working for everyone. He is therefore a big advocate of remote working and would like to see it adopted more widely. He says “It can throw up management issues but they are easily overcome and in most cases leave you with a happy, profitable and empowered workforce.”

As the news of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine broke in March and as an advocate of remote working it was clear to Peter that he could help in some way. That is when Laptops 4 Livelihoods was born. Peter knew that the thousands of Ukrainian women and children fleeing their country and crossing into Poland would need to earn money once they had found a roof over their heads. Most of the women became the sole breadwinners in their families. For the children, their schooling paused. However, soon enough, teachers who remained in Ukraine started to teach their students remotely online. To access work and schooling, the families needed technology that they had left behind, such as laptops.

Over the last 6 months Peter has sourced 80 secondhand laptops along with help from Faye Savage, a volunteer charity worker based in Krakow and originally from Bristol. Those laptops came from the general public and large talent search company Wilson HCG. They have been distributed to Slavic Mission, a centre housing over 3,500 refugees as well as other charities who needed the laptops.

The Laptops 4 Livelihoods team has secured another 100 laptops coming soon from another large UK company and Essex IT company, Secure IT Services, have wiped the laptops free of charge without accessing any data.

Next week team Boolkah is heading over to Krakow to meet the women and children benefiting from the laptops. Laptops 4 Livelihoods has enabled children to continue their schooling remotely, as well as mothers to learn Polish to access work or to simply use the laptops to work remotely and support their families.

Peter says “As business leaders we can make a difference to those facing some of the hardest times of their lives.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lucy Hood .