Windfarm donates £100,000 to laptop campaign for children in need
Sonja Chirico Indrebø, plant manager, Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm. - Credit: Equinor
A windfarm has made a generous £100,000 donation to a campaign aiming to enable disadvantaged children to access online learning.
The Every Child Online campaign, run by this newspaper alongside Norfolk County Council and the Norfolk Community Foundation, is giving laptops and tablets to those who need them most.
Equinor, which operates Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm in Great Yarmouth and Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm, donated the money from the windfarm's community fund, which will be used to purchase devices for the 6,000 children in Norfolk who do not have access to online learning.
Sonja Chirico Indrebø, the Great Yarmouth windfarm's plant manager, said the company had decided to donate the large sum due to staff experiences of home-schooling and following extensive fundraising for STEM causes across the county, totalling over £1m to date.
The goal of the campaign is to connect children who need it with online learning. - Credit: Neil Didsbury
She said: "We've been following Covid in the community very closely and last year we were supporting the Norfolk Community Foundation in their ways of providing support around Covid as part of the Norfolk Resilience Forum which was giving money to areas that needed it.
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"Then we saw this year the Every Child Online campaign, and we thought this was fantastic because the main motivation for our community fund is for STEM initiatives, so normally we are supporting schools by providing funds to buy various things such as a 3D printer.
"Knowing how hard it is to home-school children as parents ourselves we thought this would be the best thing to do to help, to make sure everyone has the foundation to get key learning even from a distance over this period."
The donation comes as it was announced that the campaign had acquired almost 5,000 laptops for children in need across the county, with the latest donation from Equinor bringing the funds raised to £192,000.
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The Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm is owned by Equinor, Masdar and China Resources.
Those wishing to donate equipment to the Every Child Online campaign should email devices@norfolk.gov.uk.
To donate funds, visit the Norfolk Community Foundation's website.
