Word: olpc
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Mackenzie Sigalos ’10 also tackled the issue of accessibility in her team’s winning social venture project DigiLit. She said she was inspired by the non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), which aims to provide inexpensive laptops to children throughout the developing world in order to eliminate poverty through education...
Perhaps a more apt criticism of OLPC is that the laptops don’t directly support local educational infrastructure. The project is decentralized and shifts agency to kids and away from state educational systems. OLPC supplies equipment, not teacher training or better curriculum. But there’s no reason why OLPC can’t accompany other state-sponsored initiatives. Ablorde Ashigbi ’11, an OLPC representative, claims, “An XO is never supposed to substitute for a teacher. But it does purposefully empower the children. People don’t realize there?...
Some communities are not comfortable with children browsing foreign advertising, entertainment, and general worldviews whenever they like. There’s a legitimate fear the OLPC pushes flashy consumerism and invasive technology on peoples. Mohammed Diop, a Malinese economist, has attacked the project as an attempt to exploit poor nations by making them pay for millions of impractical machines. To many who are used to a history of false promises and downright lies, allowing a U.S. company to hold a financial stake in the education of their children is anathema...
...long as the program’s coordinators and supporters don’t adopt a blind charity mentality but converse to find ways to use the equipment best on the terms of recipients, there should be no reason to stop for fear of cultural debasement. So long as OLPC shies away from the popular “Save the Third World from All Its Self-Imposed Problems” rhetoric, tensions can dissipate enough for the laptops to do what they’re supposed...
...OLPC should not lose heart. There may be hardware problems, and even over-ambition problems, but the NGO is on the right track. Indeed, groups around the world are emulating its endeavors: The Indian government is busy working on a laptop for a mere 500 rupees...