Free Geek
Volunteering at Free Geek provides a rewarding way to give back to the community through technology recycling.
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Reflection
Having worked at Free Geek for a few weeks, I have a new appreciation for the people that work with technology. There are a few basic areas that volunteer work happen and I can say that being in the grunt work part has been quite tiring. I took apart CD drives the first time I was there and then moved on to random things they needed taken apart and found it to be repetitive but kind of fun after a while. At the end of the first shift I could see the buckets of different materials that we had separated them into and it made me feel accomplished. However, this was something that needed to be done as they were getting the important parts out to recycle or use in something else. The second thing I did there was to take apart desktop computers and take out all the reusable parts like the motherboard and fans. The metal in the cases was just thrown in a dumpster to be recycled somewhere else. I was also part of the sorting table that sorted all the different wires and things with wires on them which was a lot of fun. The best was untangling the wires from other things as a sort of game to see where the wires would lead. All of the things that I did while at Free Geek were necessary to help the community get computers that would otherwise not have the option to and to maybe send them outside of Portland. I had a very good time while volunteering at Free Geek and felt that I could see the progress I was making as the day went on which was gratifying.