Nonprofit Technology Resources leads digital literacy training, facing tightening budget
Aisha Moody, 33 of North Philadelphia, receives help from instructor Stanley Pokras during a computer class at Nonprofit Technology Resources located at 1524 Brandywine St. Photo by Sarah Schu
Philly Tech Week NTR laptop donation drive
When: Monday, April 25 to Friday, April 29 from 12-1 p.m., during Philly Tech Week
Where: WHYY, 150 North 6th Street (6th and Race), Old City
Requirements: At least Pentium 4 processor
A sign reading “NTR Computer Thrift Store” is mostly all that welcomes visitors to the modest headquarters of Nonprofit Technology Resources on Brandywine Street in Spring Garden. Budget concerns have raised fears in recent months that the sign won’t be needed there for long.
Farther down the building’s brick façade are arched and rectangular cutouts that have been replaced with art installations of meticulously arranged motherboards, floppy disks, computer mice and other assorted discarded gadgetry.
The result is a kind of DIY memorial to forsaken technology that has largely been abandoned in favor of the best, the newest and the fastest. A fitting message, given NTR’s overall operating model. [Full disclosure: NTR is a former advertiser]
“We recycle computers instead of throwing them in the scrap yard,” said sales associate Melvin Bonilla, 24, of Kensington. “Someone’s got to do it.”
