For Shahbarreena Md Shaheed, 15 it's tough doing school work without a computer at home. When she needed to do a school project on Mother Teresa, she had to get a classmate to surf the internet for information.

While others breezed through their maths problems on the computer, she needed to plough through stacks of paper. Said Shahbarreena, who has never surfed the Net: "I have been asking my mother to buy a computer, but she keep saying she didn't the money."

Coffeeshop assistant Natarajan Saoja, 42, won't have to put up with her badgering for long. The family will soon get their own computer-for free. They will be one of the first beneficiaries of the scheme when it starts operations in three to six months time.

Shahbarreena and her two younger brothers- Madarshah Shaik Jailani, 14 and Sabruddin, seven, can't wait to get their hands on their computer. "The first thing I want to do is to make(greeting) cards for my family and friends. I will load in software with many nice cards to choose from," said Shahbarreena, in secondary three at Beatty Secondary.

She is also eager to surf the Net. "I have heard so much about it. I want to try, but my schools doesn't allow surfing in the computer labs. "And I want to chat and make friends with someone out there," she said. But after all the fun, she intends to get down to work.

"I want to get lots of CD-ROMs to improve my maths. It's my weakest subject," she said. Her mother is excited too. "She can teach her brothers on the computer and they can all use it for their studies," said the divorcee who earns $600 a month.

The cooperative, which aims to put computers in 14,000 needy Indian homes within five years, will be sellimg upgraded computers. These families can pay in instalments for the pentium computers which will cost them between $600 to $700. There will also be computer courses at subsidised rates.