Please take a moment to learn more about Mary Lou Jepsen, one of OLPC’s founders. We are grateful for her vision, dedication and commitment to education.

Mary Lou Jepsen, Inventor, Entrepreneur

Education is the first step to equality. OLPC believes that by providing girls with a quality, innovative education, we can create a world where all children have an equal opportunity to succeed.

The OLPC Vision

OLPC believes every child deserves a quality education and bright future. OLPC works to create a world where each child has an equal opportunity to succeed through education.

The OLPC Mission

OLPC’s mission is to create educational opportunities for the world’s most vulnerable children by providing each child with a rugged, connected laptop computer, loaded with content and software designed for joyful, self-empowered learning.

OLPC implements its educational program to provide students with the opportunity to use technology in innovative and creative ways, to support and supplement existing curriculum, to combat social exclusion and to encourage innovation and individual empowerment.

Throughout 2018, we will explore different aspects of the OLPC educational program and the impact on student achievement and community development around the world.

Stay tuned for more information!

Thank you for your support for the OLPC Educational Program!

On May 10^th to 12^th, 2017, leaders and stakeholders from various industries, countries and continents gathered in the KIGALI CONVENTION CENTER to participate in the Transform Africa Summit. They all had one purpose: to foster constructive conversation towards building a Smart Africa. The Transform Africa Summit facilitated meetings for leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss policies and opportunities to accelerate the continent towards a socio-economic transformation, as the theme for the summit stated:  “Smart Cities Fast Forward.”

OLPC and Foundation Zamora Teran participated in this summit as a wonderful example of how technology combined with commitment is indeed the solution to sustainability and development.

During the summit, Foundation Zamora Teran shared its experience with the One Laptop Per Child projects in Central America. As a part of its educational program, the Foundation Zamora Teran created the first digital island, Ometepe. This served as a relevant case study for the summit. Summit participants had the opportunity to interact with the OLPC and FZT teams to learn about the strategies they employ for success in their educational program. One such strategy for success focuses on actively engaging all relevant stakeholders, including educators, technical teams and operations teams, in the process.  The three sectors work together to bring all stakeholders together in order to positively impact the community

During the exhibition, many officials from participating countries visited the OLPC/FZT stand to learn how its ecosystem could be a key to sustaining different development projects in their respective countries. Journalists and TV stations also had the opportunity to learn more about the OLPC/FZT services. FZT and OLPC conducted interviews as well.

The Summit was a wonderful opportunity for OLPC and FZT to build global connections to increase opportunities to provide children around the world with a quality, innovative education.

(Below are several interviews.)

In 2016, the Fundación Zamora Terán in Nicaragua  entered Phase II of its One Laptop Per Child Educational Program. In an effort to strengthen the program, the Fundación Zamora Terán signed a collaboration agreement with FUNDECYT-PCTEX a non-profit organization based in Spain to continue to support the educational program throughout Central America.

The objective of the collaboration is to continue the social transformation process and strengthen the existing educational institutions. Extremadura, an organization based in Spain, is devoting resources to further support innovative education in Nicaragua. The organizations are working together to network, innovate, and scale the OLPC educational program. Estremadura is currently developing new educational applications for the XO Laptop. The organizations opened CEDSL in 2015, a space for educational innovation and training, using open source software and technologies. Teachers, university students, staff of NGOs and other foundations come to receive training on the use of technology in the educational process.

The project also strengthens the role of the private sector in achieving inclusive and sustainable growth in developing countries. The organizations  promote and strengthen public-private partnerships by creating new, multilateral partnerships and alliances between national and local authorities, business and NGOs in order to facilitate the development of local capacity and the delivery of services, particularly in rural areas for women and other marginalized groups.

More than 390 people will benefit from this alliance, including technical staff and educational officers of the Fundación Zamora Terán (15), teachers from primary schools in Nicaragua (52), students of the San Judas Tadeo Educational Center of Managua (188), University students from UNAN, UdM and UNI of Nicaragua (105), university support staff of the Free Software Development Center (10), NGOs, technical personnel and Nicaraguan Educational Foundations (20 participants).

The applications developed for the XO Laptops will benefit 224,000 people in the region, including 45,500 children, and more than 1,000 teachers in schools in which the FZT has a presence in Nicaragua and Honduras. Applications developed during phases I and II of the project will be available through the XO Laptops and will be distributed nationwide. All XO Laptops use free software. In addition, the families of participating children will have the ability to access and use such applications.

OLPC France (http://olpc-france.org), a volunteer driven association, has just released a new version of the Sugarizer platform. Sugarizer allows the Sugar Learning Software to be used on any device. More precisely, Sugarizer is a port of Sugar – the open source learning platform distributed on the XO laptops – in web technologies. You can run it within a browser (http://try.sugarizer.org), as well as from your Android, iOS or Windows device. There are links for every device.  Any computer, tablet or smartphone can be transformed into an XO Laptop! The Sugar Learning Software allows children to learn through doing. Sugarizer allows children to benefit from the Sugar Learning Software from any device. Children also have the ability to connect globally with the worldwide OLPC experience.

OLPC France, a grassroots organization started in 2008, has run several OLPC deployments. The organization distributed 200 XO Laptops to a small island north of Madagascar. It also provided 50 XO Laptops to a city near Paris. Recently, it distributed 25 XO Laptops in Saint-Ouen, a suburb of Paris.

(XO-4 used in the classroom in Saint-Ouen)

This new deployment is also using 25 Android tablets with the Sugarizer OS (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.olpc_france.sugarizeros), which replaces the standard Android environment. Children can then enjoy a Sugar-like look and feel and activities (e.g. Labyrinth, an application to build mind maps or the famous Speak activity), and other Android applications (like Book Creator).

Still in beta, the Sugarizer features continue to improve, thanks to support from the SugarLabs community and Google. This month, two students from the Google Summer of Code program (https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) will join the team. There are currently 24 activities available in the latest version of Sugarizer (v0.8). The volunteer team continues to work to port new activities. The next version of Sugarizer (v0.9) will have at least 30 activities. All Sugarzier activities are available in English, French, and Spanish. Sugarizer is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, Polish, Igbo and Yoruba.

With Sugarizer, the spirit of OLPC is now accessible from any device.