It always starts in a garage.
Before they became some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world, the humble beginnings of technology companies like Apple and Microsoft have been well documented as their founders tinkered with tech and built computers in their garages.
Open up the garage door at the Allen family’s Monclova home in 2022, and it's a similar scene. Boxes containing 250 refurbished computers line the walls, as they prepare to be shipped to an underserved school in Vietnam. The project is the brainchild of Nathan Allen, a senior at St. John’s Jesuit High School.
“I was talking with my parents, and they were fully on board. For about a month, my garage became a workspace,” he said. “Had to park the cars in the street, we put up tables in the garage, and we basically were waiting for the computers to come in.”
It was the combination of an entrepreneurial spirit, a passion for technology, and a desire to give back that motivated him for his Magis Society capstone project.
“He knocked it out of the park with this one,” said Adam Dane, who is an English teacher and director of the Magis Society program at St. John’s. “I’m just really impressed that he can combine those facets of himself and use his passion to help others to create something that’s very real.”
Mr. Dane said that the Magis program has been around for about six years at St. John’s and has about 100 involved students that take unique classes that involve more project-based learning, critical thinking, and disciplinary content, in addition to having other enrichment opportunities.
The program culminates with each student developing their capstone project, starting in their junior year. When Mr. Allen presented his project, Mr. Dane was expecting something ambitious.
“Nate is a special guy, he’s one of our finest graduating seniors, no doubt,” Mr. Dane said. “I kind of expected something that we were going to have to wrangle with, with him, because he has pretty grand visions, which he can often execute.”
The high school senior found his passion at a young age, collecting aluminum cans and recycling them as a way to make some extra money. That snowballed into him collecting copper, a more valuable commodity which he mainly took from old electronics, and eventually starting up an electronic waste recycling business of his own.
Last year, he was working at a charity auction for the Development of Vietnam Endeavors Fund when he found out that the organization had been donating and sending books to the country for the past 22 years.
The idea was there, he just had to find a way to get the computers. Through his recycling business, he was able to network and the idea eventually caught on with Stride, formerly K12, the online school program that agreed to donate some of their old computers for the project.
“Not only am I going to get computers for my huge project, I’m also saving them the issue of throwing these out and I’m also preventing waste,” he said. “So it’s kind of like a win-win-win for everyone.”
His shipment arrived in January, and he got to work sorting right away. The computers came in varying conditions, from fully functional to completely broken. After sorting and cleaning, which Mr. Allen said was one of the most time-consuming parts of the project, he finally got down to fixing them up, scrapping parts from the broken computers to fix the ones that could still be saved.
“So I’m sending over 250 [computers], let’s be generous and say that only 100 of them are used. Think about that: 100 kids that are now going to be able to be educated,” he said. “Once I get them shipped off, it’ll truly be a success, but from everything I’ve done, I already see it as a huge success.”
Even with the computers newly functional, getting them out of the country is a whole different task. He’s been in contact with the Vietnam Embassy in Washington and has sent in all of his paperwork. Now, he’s just waiting to get the green light from the country before the computers can go out. He said that is likely to happen around the end of April.
Mr. Allen said that he plans to pursue higher education when he graduates but hasn’t decided what school he wants to attend yet. He hopes to pursue a business-oriented degree.
“I think it’s important to realize in America, in the world, how blessed I am to get an education, how blessed I am to have the things that I have,” he said. “This project will always have a mark on my mind to say ‘Hey, you’re doing well. There’s people who aren’t doing well, maybe give back to them.’”
Mr. Dane said that it’s projects like Mr. Allen’s that help inspire the next round of projects for new students. During the project showcase a few weeks ago, the computer project was one of the most talked about.
“Because of guys like Nathan Allen and a few of his classmates who also had really ambitious projects, they were able to deliver the best year of projects we’ve seen,” Mr. Dane said. “It just keeps building and building and that momentum is growing every year.”
First Published April 17, 2022, 4:00 p.m.
