OLPCCorps UMF Zambia

Answer the basics:
Lead teacher and current graduate student Amity Beane, accompanied by undergraduate students from the University of Maine, Farmington, will travel to Zambia from June to August to deploy 100 laptops at the Cheshire Community Care Center located in Kaoma, Zambia. The children at the Center will receive the laptops and and will be shown how to plan, produce, and present mutlimedia artifacts based on the oral nature of the culture.

The local partner in Maine is the WISE organization, Women Iniatives that Strengthen and Empower based in Readfield, Maine. The NGO leads volunteer groups to Kaoma 2-3 times a year to support the Center as well as the Community School, both under the auspices of the Catholic Church.

A selected population at the Cheshire Center will be given a kit of laptops and digital cameras (Flips) to make movies. Currently the curricular plan is to allow the laptops to go to the 12 year olds, and the cameras to the 8 year olds, and all ages in between must be cast in the films. The team from UMF will act as facilitators and guides to the equipment and process, while encouraging the development of stories that reflect the wants, needs, desires, fears, concerns, and dreams of the children.

The resulting films, which will be shot and edited over a period of 4 weeks, will then be shown locally. The films will then be distributed globally in an effort to raise awareness for the Center's children and their needs.

The UMF team will also partner with the Community School to incorporate the use of the laptops in the classroom. The curricular plan for adult training will include a complete breakdown of hardware, and hands-on, constructionist projects by the teachers to demonstrate the different ways of creating and connecting with each other to construct knowledge.

An extension of this interaction will be to "afrocentrize" the platform of the laptops by culturally adapting Sugar commands to reflect the cultural concepts of learning more accurately.

Letters of support

WISE in Readfield, Maine
Kaoma headmaster @ The Kaoma Community school
Director @ Cheshire Community Care Center

Describe your project's financial needs.

Logistics
Air
Bus
Local transport

Food and Lodging
Guest house
Cook

Additonal tech
Flips
Storage fees for laptops

How will you provide financial support after you leave?

After the summer work has ended, Amity and the team will embark on a series of fund-raising events at local schools, churches and civic organizations to share the films by the Cheshire Community Center orphans and raise funds for necessary equipment and hardware upgrades.

Communication
Zambia's national language is English.

The principal investigator speaks English, French, and Spanish.