Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust works with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds aged 13

to 30 to inspire and enable them to succeed in the career of their choice. The Trust believes that someone’s background should not limit what they can achieve and run high impact programmes that inspire and enable young people from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds to succeed.

As a non-profit organization, Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust doesn’t have dedicated IT support service or setup, relying instead on one part-time IT volunteer to help troubleshoot devices and reset routers. Originally, the center was fitted with just one router and a WiFi extender to boost the signal in more distant parts of the building, which often failed. As a result, the signal was poor, network

transparency was limited and the Trust had no central bandwidth control. As the trust grew larger and wanted to include separate businesses on its WiFi network, it was faced with a growing concern: the need for faster, wider and more secure network coverage.

 “Previously, we only had WiFi for staff, which constantly broke down and only had signal in certain areas of the building. So, we knew that to transform our new center into a co-working space, we needed a faster, more stable network. Since installing the Zyxel Nebula system our WiFi is stronger and faster, and we have been able to take on tenants who can use our center as their office.

The trust approached IT support provider Vibrant Networks, initially looking for new routers or WiFi boosters. After assessing the center’s needs, Vibrant advised deploying the Zyxel Nebula system, along with access points and a switch to ensure a fast and secure network.

As the center redevelopment was a pro-bono project, Zyxel donated equipment to help the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust achieve growth, without having to use funding that could otherwise go back into the trust. “Operationally, co-working is now fundamental to what we do here. Thanks to that extra revenue, the trust broke even on our building costs this year for the first time, meaning we’re able to put more money back into the work we do with disadvantaged young people – and we haven’t had to pick up the phone to IT support once,”

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