When I was introducing the concept of "geeks of color" to Paul, the example I used was when I went to Egypt to visit our fair trade partner there, and I brought two "broken" laptops. They were screened as non-working but not broken screen etc. I arrived at Hamdy's office, gave him the two laptops. He gave them both to a tech (now a facebook buddy of mine) and we chatted some more. 45 minutes later, his tech came back with two working laptops. I gave one to Hamdy and the other I kept and worked on for the remaining ten days.
This activity, which produced zero waste, two laptops, and a job, is not considered legal by BAN.org but is explicitly defined as legal by the Basel Convention, which Basel Action Network promotes at times and opposes at times.
