Leasing World - 10/12/07

Syscap, the UKs leading independent IT finance provider, has announced the first charity to benefit from its charitable arm, the Syscap Foundation. Express Link-Up, a children's charity that brings technology to sick and disadvantaged children, will receive 75 percent of the total funds raised by the Syscap Foundation throughout the 2007/08 financial year.

Established in April 2007, the Syscap Foundation was set up to support charities that use technology to help people. Most Syscap Foundation funds are raised internally through sponsored staff events, including raffles, competitions and sports events such as marathons and triathlons.

Express Link-Up is a charity that provides computer equipment, Internet links and teaching resources to schools within childrens hospitals and to sick children who are housebound in the UK and in other countries across the world.

Robert Eggleston, Syscap Foundation Chairman and Director of Strategic Development at Syscap, says: As a company heavily involved with IT, we recognise the value of technology and how it can improve peoples lives. Many Syscap employees have children but most of them are fortunate enough to have their health and the support of their families. Express Link-Up does a fantastic job in helping sick and disadvantaged children from the UK and across the world communicate, learn and play, so it is a fitting charity for us to support.

Pat Ryans, CEO of Express Link-UP, says: 'It is always gratifying when an IT company adopts a charity such as ours, which is aimed at children in hospital, whose education is improved by access to IT on the wards or in the hospital classrooms.

'Express Link-Up provides this support for all the hospital schools in the UK, but our partnership with Syscap will target some special projects: The Royal Marsden Children's Cancer Unit in Sutton, Surrey, the four HIV/AIDS After-School IT programmes in New York for teenagers who were abandoned or orphaned and the Holy Cross Convent in Cape Town where nuns are running literacy programmes for parents and children, using the equipment and software we have donated.'

The remaining 25 percent of the Syscap Foundation funds will be distributed amongst similar charities in the UK and abroad. The next fundraising events to be held are a Christmas raffle, taking place on 14 December, in London, and Syscap's annual survey to customers and partners, which will generate a donation to the Foundation for each completed survey.