One Laptop Per Child

My husband returned from ApacheCon , a conference about the latest developments with Apache open source software, the Friday before Thanksgiving. He can sometimes be considered a cynic, but was excited by a presentation he saw on the One Laptop Per Child project.

Besides love, children need two things to develop into contributing citizens of the world: health and education. There are many organizations who help children's health and rightly so. Now, a new organization is helping with children's education and it's not even a month old, although people have been developing it for years.

One Laptop Per Child is doing just what you'd think. They are starting to provide free laptops to the nearly 2 billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While the United States does not have a perfect education system, our government provides $7,500 per child, per year for education.

The laptops are more durable than normal, require very little energy, can be viewed in the brightest sunlight, and the keyboards have been developed for small hands.

I'm sure there will be bugs to work out. But this is a great idea that is a reality. A lot of big donors and corporations have already put in a lot of money to get this off the ground. But more still needs to be done.

With a computer a child can learn, as well as connect with others and expand their world. We know this because of our blogworld, so I thought- what an appropriate charitable organization to highlight.

Please go to the OLPC website to learn more. Technology is changing our world and it's about to change some kids who need some helping hands... and tools.

For those interested- the OLPC is offering the Give One Get One program, for every laptop you donate, you get one for your child, through the end of the year to raise awareness for the project.

Countries and teachers and parents and children are excited about this innovative mission. It's cool to read about technological progress being made for those in need... and even change my cynical husband's mind once in a while.

Nicole likes to concentrate on the good stuff, even right now while her son is fighting an ear infection. That's the rule of her blog- www.BananaBlueberry.com.