Repair Cafe Albury Wodonga seeks laptops for refugees living on the Border

The Shikiro family arrived in Albury three years ago after fleeing violence and social upheaval in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mr Shikiro, wife Aimee and their children Comfort, 6, Samuel, 11, Daniel, 10, said their secondhand laptop was invaluable.

"We can stay in touch with people," he said.

"We can learn online through places like TAFE.

"There are a lot of things we use it for but we're all still learning!"

As of yesterday, 26 computers have been donated to the Laptop Program, which was run by Repair Cafe Albury Wodonga. Ten were donated at the Repair Cafe in Wodonga in August.

Nine laptops have been refurbished and given to the Murray Valley Sanctuary Refugee Group or Red Cross.

Murray Valley Sanctuary Refugee Group spokeswoman Helen Putland welcomed the donations.

She said they were an important communication tool for refugees.

"This new scheme is great because the computers are portable," she said.

"Desktop computers take up a lot of space and refugees often don't have much furniture let alone a table for a computer."

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Laptop Program co-ordinator Bruce Nulty said all personal data was removed from the hard drive of donated laptops and the operating system was updated too.

Mr Nulty said even devices with cracked screens were useful.

One such donation would be used for parts but it was worthwhile fitting another with a new screen to use with an external monitor.

Repair Cafe Albury Wodonga spokeswoman Allison Bowman encouraged people to donate unwanted laptops.

"If people have any old laptops sitting in the cupboard or lying in the wardrobe and you don't know what to do with them, we'd love to hear from them," she said.

The Laptop Program had saved about 70 kilograms of waste going to landfill.

Repair Cafe runs at Wodonga Senior Citizens Centre on the first Saturday of the month, 10am to 1pm.

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