A new coupon available for purchase on mega website Groupon buys more than discounted gel manicures and gourmet meals for two.

The $10 coupons are helping PBS Hawaii raise money to purchase one external, one-terabyte hard drive for each of the 85 public and private schools participating in HIKI NO, the station’s statewide student news network.

The deal is part of a campaign that was launched through Groupon Grassroots, the philanthropic arm of Groupon.

The idea is simple. Groupon subscribers go to the deal’s page and pledge to help pay for the hard drives in increments of $10. (One hard drive costs $125.)

Why hard drives?

Through HIKI NO, public, charter and private schools of all grade levels report and produce news features for a weekly primetime broadcast that airs Thursdays on PBS Hawaii. And as anyone familiar with broadcast news production can imagine, the students produce a lot of unused video material that takes up significant space on computers. 

That means students frequently are forced to delete stories before they air or have final approval simply because they have nowhere to put the data.

HIKI NO Executive Producer Robert Pennybacker says the hard drives will allow students to save the stories and drafts on which they’ve worked so hard. 

“It’s an important piece of the HIKI NO process that is helping students master 21st-century workforce skills,” he said in a press release.

The campaign was slated to expire Sept. 11, but after receiving windfall of donations within the first day of posting the coupons, PBS Hawaii has decided to extend it through Sept. 18, a spokeswoman told Civil Beat.

Photo: HIKI NO students film a broadcast segment. (Courtesy of PBS Hawaii.)

— Alia Wong