Princeton-Engineers Without Borders collab grows in Ghana

Separate from the national program being rolled out in Eastern Ghana, Princeton University has a student-run Ghana School Library Initiative which is building a physical library in Ghana stocked with books and OLPCs.    This program started in 2008, and is one of three projects coordinated by the Princeton University chapter of Engineers Without Borders. They shared an update with East Coast OLPCers this Spring, and have been writing about their new milestones this summer, as the library nears completion.

 

After some work earlier this year to repair and update some donated XOs, children have started working with their own laptops at the EP Basic school in Ashaiman, Ghana, where the team is working. They recently completed a week of physical construction and two classes a day with the students.   The classes included working on educational activities with the children in Sugar, “to whet their appetites” to use the XOs more on their own.

St. Kitts enters 2nd phase of laptop program

St. Kitts is expanding its (lowercase) olpc program for high school students. The program, sponsored by their diplomatic ally Taiwan, began with 1200 students in April. This month they are adding 2400 more students.  Ambassador Tsao, the Taiwanese ambassador to St. Kitts, said on Monday that children having their own laptops was “tantamount to hav[ing] keys to their bright future”.

Tamin-Lee in Africa: Part 2

Tamin-Lee Connolly & her land cruiser continues her year-long trip around Africa, maintaining her excellent travel blog. In a recent interview with Gulf News, she notes:

I feel my journey is just about to begin. Africa lies ahead of me, but my path could take me anywhere. One thing is for sure, my future will combine education with volunteering. I’m happiest when I’m giving back – especially to children.

Grassroots work in East Timor

Tony Forster posted videos of recent work with OLPCs in East Timor.  He has been travelling around the world helping smaller deployments for much of the past year; I last caught up with him at LinuxTag this spring, and was delighted by his stories.   I hope to see more visual field reports like this from the most rural schools as well.