Remember when you were an EEE freshie? You were probably both excited and anxious about the road ahead. You made it through, and are now undoubtedly doing bigger and better things.

Today’s situation however poses new challenges for students. With the sudden shift to remote learning, access to computing devices and reliable Internet connectivity have become a must, but some of our students can’t afford these. As of last count, there were 49 students among our current population of 1200+ who indicated they didn’t have any laptop or other devices to use. There are many more who have to share or borrow from family members also studying or working from home.

To support our students in need, you and your friends — group effort, just like old times! — can Support an Undergrad’s Learning and ONline Access Towards Graduation (SULONG!) through a basic computing package that can be used to access the Internet, do computational work, learn programming, run simulations, and even independently tinker and develop those creative juices for which EEE students and graduates are known. These basic computing packages, built around the well-known Raspberry Pi computing platform, will go a long way to help an EEE student in need.

How much would this cost? Each donation package is PhP15,000 (USD310). That’s equivalent to only PhP1,250 per month, or PhP312.50 per week — a little over the cost of two tall coffee (or milk tea) beverages each week. We know you like your coffee, and we’re not asking you to forego those drinks. It’s just to put things into perspective.

In this drive, we’ll prioritize the 49 students without computing resources. If we’ll be able to gather more than enough donations, we’ll also provide packages to those students sharing laptops with their siblings or parents.

If you are interested, please let us know your intent by accomplishing this Google Form.