Fixes donated laptops for students without one
Hassan Jafari is a computer engineer from Tehran who arrived in Cork in 2022. He had eight years of experience in hardware maintenance, network infrastructure, and IT support. His qualifications were in assessment for eighteen months before recognition.
During that period he heard through a DGS connection that a primary school in a Cork suburb had children in his daughter's class who had no home laptop and were falling behind in digital literacy modules. He offered to source and repair donated equipment.
He began posting in local Facebook groups asking for unwanted laptops and computers. The response exceeded his expectations. In the first month he received 34 items in various states of repair. He set up a workbench in his kitchen.
Of those 34 machines, Hassan repaired and fully configured 26 — wiped clean, updated OS, appropriate software installed, safe browsing configured. He donated them through the school to families identified by the teachers as most in need.
He has since run two further donation rounds. He has repaired and donated 71 devices in total. He now also runs a monthly session at the school teaching parents basic device maintenance.
Hassan was offered IT employment at a Cork technology company in 2024. He accepted. He still runs the laptop repair operation on weekends.