Last week, we announced a new student-based, grassroots initiative called OLPCorps (pronounced O-L-P-C-Corps). You can find information about the program at several places, and I’d encourage you to do so before reading on.

This post, addressing OLPCorps’ goals, is the first of many to address specific parts of the program.

Through OLPCorps, we hope to engage highly ambitious, talented, and connected university students in our mission of revolutionizing learning environments for children. OLPCorps can attract widespread international attention among young adults and facilitate long-term partnerships between university students, schools, and NGOS across the world. OLPCorps focuses on deployments in Africa. OLPC also offers internships in Latin America.

Directly, OLPCorps will yield up to 100 deployments and thousands of relationships each year. Because we’re reaching out to people who haven’t been actively involved in OLPC in large numbers in the past, we can dramatically increase OLPC’s network of supporters. The current OLPC community can actively participate in OLPCorps through the OLPCorps Support Committee.

I encourage you to join the discussion on OLPCorps and offer helpful suggestions and questions to improve the program. To everyone who has contributed to the discussion on OLPCorps, thank you!

Look for future posts on the OLPCorps program, including why we’re focusing on university students.