Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Family computing for a cause
It's a new twist on buy one, get one free. You buy a laptop for a child in a developing country and your child gets one free. The project is called “Give 1 Get 1,” and with it, "Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399," the New York Times reports. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. Long in development, the One Laptop per Child campaign is "an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children," according to the Times. And there have been some successes in getting laptops to their intended owners - e.g., Peru "will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year — many of them allocated for remote rural areas," and the Italian government "has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia."
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I heard about this on the radio the other morning. My one thought is that it will be like tv's. Do you remember the statistics about tv ownership in the U.S? The poorest families in our country had multiple televisions, even though they couldn't finish school feed their children and pay the bills.
ReplyDeleteToday I'm sure many of these same families also have cell phones and computers. But does that really bring them a better life all on its own?
This is the Field of Dreams approach to computer ownership. "If you give it to them, they will be" (be fed, be clothed, be educated, be interested...)
I just hope these computer projects also include other support for these families. Not just the dump and run approach.