Polo Custom Products, now in its 75th year, strives to enrich the communities in which it operates. To that end, the company, with facilities in Ackerman and in Louisville, recently contributed 20 laptops – 10 for the Choctaw County Library and 10 for the Winston County Library. Future plans are for Polo personnel to work with the libraries and help area adults gain computer skills that will help make them more viable hires in their employment pursuits.
“A few months ago, our company had no idea that we would be donating laptops. In fact, we hadn’t even identified there was a need in our community for resources to teach computer skills to adults,” said Shantell Stevens, Polo training administrator. “It is amazing how simple conversations with people who care about other people can turn into something wonderful for everyone involved.”
When the Polo Custom Products IT department travelled from the company’s headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, to the Mississippi location in Louisville to deliver tablets for production use, they encountered a challenge. The team of Jason Ryan, Rob Ward, and Shantell Stevens learned many adults had a high fail rate on the Polo employment test.
Brook Greene, programmer/analyst, inquired as to whether the team had any ideas on the root cause of the problem.
“Our explanation was that education standards in Mississippi years ago were not what they are today, and many adults over 35 or 45 may not have had much access to computers in high school and most likely have never owned one,” Stevens said.
She continued, “Therefore, a simple employment test for millennials and Gen Z’ers is a very stressful experience for older members of our community. The very generations with the most experience and practical knowledge of manufacturing are the same people we are often unable to be hired because of the obstacles they face from less access to computers.”
Greene immediately worked with Ryan and Ward to identify a way to combat this obstacle. One way was to provide the community with laptops. To that end, Ryan engaged the assistance of his brother who owns a business that refurbishes laptops.
The team also decided the local libraries should be enlisted because they manage the systems offering communities free access to educational resources.
At the Winston County Library, the team met with Beth Edwards, the librarian, who steered them toward Michael David in the IT department of the Mid-Mississippi Regional Library System. And Cristen Chandler, librarian at the Choctaw County Library in Ackerman, was also receptive as she guided the team in understanding the needs of her branches.
Committed to helping the community, the Polo IT team utilized a donation from the Polo Contributions Committee to also provide licenses needed to run Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows software on the 20 new laptops. Polo team members are slated to begin offering computer classes to adults using these donated laptops two Fridays each month at the libraries in Louisville and Ackerman.
Classes will be free to the public and open to any adult community member with a desire to learn. Persons should inquire at the libraries for upcoming dates and times. The Choctaw County Library can be reached at (662) 285-6348 and the Winston County Library at (662) 773-3212.
