OLPCorps MIT Mauritania Bababe

University: MIT

Team: Mary Wang, Owen Derby, Janet Li, Madeline Mirzoeff

NGO: Peace Corps

Local Contact: Zach, Environmental Educator

Deployment Location: Bababé, Mauritania

Deployment Date: June 20th-August 22nd, 2009

Our goal is to give children the tools needed to explore the world and to learn independently of the rote memorization they are accustomed to. We want to empower them with the ability to teach others and to share their ideas.

We are working with a Peace Corps [1] volunteer, Zach, on this initiative. Zach is an environmental educator in Bababé who will work with us throughout our deployment and provide facilities to store and charge the laptops. Zach will be meeting us in the capital Nouakchott to help us pick up the laptops and equipment and transport them back to Bababé.

Our deployment will be set up as a summer program based out of the local réseau de jeunesse, or youth center, in Bababé. There are normally over 200 students in Bababé who are between the ages of 10-12, so we will have to deal with the issue of having more students than laptops. Since the children are on break for the nine weeks we are there, it's hard to gauge how many students will be available to participate. We will work with Zach in the coming weeks to address this issue. In a male-dominated education system, we will provide equal opportunities to both genders.

We hope to use the laptops to show these children that there is more to learning than just rote memorization, and to enable them to achieve their dreams by teaching them how to use the XOs and the internet for their benefit. By learning through the XOs, we hope that they will jump start change in their country. Since there will be five deployment sites in the country, we can hopefully connect the children from the different sites over the internet, allowing them to record what they observe, share the designs and ideas they come up with, analyze the information they find on the web, and present the results to their peers and parents.

Our goal is to let the children bring the laptops home while they are learning to use them. However, in Mauritanian society, it is customary for the parents to own everything, so anything the child brings home becomes the property of the family. To address this problem, we will set up a loaner library of sorts where the laptops will be the property of the Peace Corps, but the children can take them home with them. They will charge the laptops at school, since power is a new arrival to Bababé and most homes do not have power. We will need to pay for the power we use to charge the laptops. Internet will be generously provided by World Vision, another NGO operating in Bababé that is currently subscribing to satellite internet.

Communication
The languages spoken in Bababé are Pulaar, Hassaniya, and French. Since three of our members know some French, we plan to communicate basic instructions this way. However, we will work closely with the volunteers on a daily basis to make sure that the children receive the most accurate instructions.
We will also change the appearance of the keys on the XOs to resemble a French keyboard.

Sustainability
The Peace Corps has been involved in Bababé for 20 years now and is making no plans to leave. The volunteers we train on the XOs will pass their skills to new volunteers, continuing our program long after we leave. We will work with local educational providers and Peace Corps volunteers, including Zach, to design lesson plans for schools to incorporate the XOs. Keeping their 5th grade public school curriculum in mind, we will show the children how to take what they have learned and apply it in a new and interesting way.

We will record the work we do in Bababe as reference for future deployments; if successful, this project will serve as a pilot for future Peace Corps programs internationally.

We will also encourage the children to keep us updated on their lives. We are looking into setting up a penpal exchange program between Bababe students and the students involved in CFS, the Cambridge, MA deployment near MIT. This will facilitate cultural awareness and allow Mauritanian students to practice their English. We will further develop this in the weeks leading up to June 8.

Our team is also in the process of establishing an official student organization at MIT dedicated to overseeing our program, logistically, financially, and personally. By becoming an official club, we will be able to apply for funding from MIT Finance Board's $200k reserve. In addition, we will be able to fundraise by holding university-wide events and by soliciting alumni and corporations for sponsorships. The money we raise will provide continuing financial support to Bababe volunteers who will maintain internet connectivity, power, server connections, and repairs and eventual replacement of the laptops, and will also raise the necessary funds to send new OLPC teams to Africa every summer.

More links
OLPCorps MIT Mauritania Bababe Health
OLPCorps MIT Mauritania Bababe Deployment Plan