The final charity that we’re sponsoring for this Imagine Peace Fest is doing big things globally with a great mind towards education and universal access to technology! So before I get started I think I nice way to plunge into OLP is with their own introduction video to show you what their about and what they’re doing!
So basically you can tell that their goal is to create a wider availability of education for all children, everywhere. This education comes, in their model, in the form of a durable, sensible, laptop that the children can use to access the internet and gain first hand experience with technology. OLP also believes that if these children get to have fun and access to a new way of learning and education that they’ll stay in school longer and work harder which will ultimately benefit their community when they get older.
Some people may say that their goals are unattainable or unachievable because of the lack of electricity to power these laptops but OLP works closely with several different manufacturers to make sure that these computers can be solar powered. Also some of the critics of OLP have given them a hard time for focusing on technology education when people in their communities may be starving and have a lack of water supply. OLP argues back that education cannot be thrown away for the sake of building the infrastructure of these communities and that when education is introduced these children may be the key to solving those problems.
OLP does not just believe that it’s goal should be to help the children in these poor, rural areas, but also to get the parents involved by having a new media between them to communicate. At the same time that the children are learning and adapting to new technology with their education their parents are gaining exposure just from the virtue that the child has the laptop in the house.
I think that OLP is doing a great job in their mission so far and it’s an honor to be able to contribute to their charity this year. but don’t take it just from me, check out their stories yourself at http://one.laptop.org/stories
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