Travel reservations
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A travel reservation portal could allow the traveller to spend the commission in a goodgifts.org-like shop with the Special Laptop Program as one choice.[Semipostal stamp]
One could form a non-profit organization to operate a travel reservation portal to provide funding for the associated charities. The portal could make use of Opodo and Pegasus, to allow travellers the full convenience of Opodo while allowing hotel-only reservations to provide more funding.
Opodo pays
- up to 1% for flights
- up to 5% for hotels
- up to 5% for cars
and can reserve holiday packages, rail + hotel etc.
- allows to collect the full commission of 8% (to 12%) for hotels.
Example
- Demonstration page - the credibility of the page would obviously benefit from an official certification from the OLPC Foundation.[Certified OLPC fundraiser]
(The example page shows affiliate links for four parent education courses now.)
Some ideas
| Rationale: Sierra Leone is an extremely poor nation with tremendous inequality in income distribution. While it possesses substantial mineral, agricultural, and fishery resources, its economic and social infrastructure is not well developed, and serious social disorders continue to hamper economic development. Nearly half of the working-age population engages in subsistence agriculture. Manufacturing consists mainly of the processing of raw materials and of light manufacturing for the domestic market.[1] |
A travel service could operate a call center in Freetown (Sierra Leone), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Bissau (Guinea-Bissau), Niamey (Niger) or Bamako (Mali) and use the call center to teach, among other things, the languages French and English Lower cost of living would probably allow some additional luxuries (teachers, additional education), while allowing sufficient salaries. Low salaries could even be seen as a feature here, so as not to make such an employment attractive for sufficiently wealthy people (Any office work may appear attractive for larger societal circles in a developing country). The call center PCs probably should run Sugar, which would also emphasize a school character of the facility. Services of the call center could be made available to all certified OLPC travel partners.
One could try to outsource a call center to (e.g.) T-Mobile USA or another call center operator interested to help. One could also certify call centers with educational facilities in developing countries with a separate certification process.
