Donate Your Get One

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If you want to donate your own laptop, consider joining others in donating to a local school or group where kids can learn together, in a well-supported environment. OLPC encourages individuals to initiate their own regional community groups,

OLPC's grassroots mailing list is a great place to find others who will work with you here.

Some groups are soliciting donated XOs for special projects. Please add your group under the appropriate category, and also add your project to our larger "Science Fair" bazaar/showcase.

For elementary school children

Developing countries

Oaxaca, Mexico

A tiny village in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, San Miguel Cuevas, is looking for donations. The village is an indigenous Mixtec community with contacts living in the United States that visit often, and can take the donations down themselves. For more information please contact Donna Slepack <dslepack@comcast.net>.

La Paz, Bolivia

Bolivian Altiplano kids doing the XO thing (full disclosure: this shows a closed private deployment. Ours, community-based, is due to begin teacher training in January)

A group of volunteers is working in Bolivia to develop local-based efforts for using OLPC computers, especially among the Aymara nation and other oral-language Native groups. OLE, Inc., a Cambridge-based non-profit is giving organizational support and OLPC, Sugarlabs and other volunteer communities also advise and support. Up to date public accountability on donated computers.

Wiki page for Bolivia and for Yama Ploskonka, contact in the USA for this project, <yamaplos@gmail.com>. A link to what we have already done to translate Sugar to Aymara, a Bolivian native language.

Receipt will be sent to donors, though a tax-related receipt will take several weeks as it is processed outside of our control. No original packaging required. Computers can be mailed to

BOLIVIA c/o Yama Ploskonka 
1400 Ruth Ave
Austin  TX 78757.

We want your computer to be used initially for two weeks of teacher training in Bolivia by the end of January 2009, then it will be handed to a Bolivian child that will be tutored by one of the trained teachers.
We will contact you with (first) name and picture of the child you have donated to.

Please contact us if you need help in erasing your files before sending the laptop in.

On May 3 more XOs donated through this page are going to Bolivia. That might be the last trip for a while...

The Caribbean

Children in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, with their Waveplace XOs

Waveplace is a non-profit that donates laptops to Caribbean children, creates training materials that teach digital media skills, and inspires teachers to use computers in new ways. We've given more than 100 laptops to children in Haiti, Nicaragua, Immokalee, and the Virgin Islands. New pilots in each of these locations are planned for 2009, as well as possible pilots in St Vincent, Jamaica, Belize, and the Dominican Republic. All who donate a laptop will receive a photo of the child who receives it.

To see Waveplace in action, watch our videos 2 3 or listen to the NPR story on us. You can also watch our 2008 Waveplace Awards show.

Please contact us through our website or send to the address below. We can use all the help we can get!

Waveplace Foundation
1838 Alder Lane
Bethlehem PA 18015

Ghana, West Africa

Boys Fascinated with XO in Children's Home, Axim, Ghana

Ghana Together is a 501c3 working with our Ghanaian partner, Western Heritage Home (WHH) in Axim, Ghana. WHH is Ghanaian registered, and run entirely by local leaders---the only local NGO in the town of about 25,000.

In January '09 we put out a plea and now have 32 GiveOne/GetOne donated OLPCs deployed in the Children's Home (orphanage) run by WHH, with five more promised. Each resident child has his/her own, and the rest are used by neighborhood children in after-school and Saturday classes. WHH has hired Maxwell Quarm to oversee the OLPC goings-on and also to serve as instructor/technican in the vocational computing lab for older chidren and adults that WHH has launched as of Sept '09.

Because Axim is a town of about 25,000, we can't just give the those few out to the neighborhood kids, so they come up to the Children's Home for classes. A bonus is a decrease in isolation for the orphaned children who live there and now have something wonderful to share with their school friends!

We are proud that we have introduced OLPCs into the Western Region of Ghana, especially the Nzema East District. The older kids in the Home are now very skilled and have been able to "teach" visiting educationists and other leaders---a wonderful opportunity for them and a chance for local Ghanaians to see for themselves what OLPCs are all about. We invite Ghanaians who may be reading this to go to Axim and see for themselves!

These are the children and Axim is the environment for whom the OLPC was designed--hot, humid, difficult rainy season, bright sunlight, teacher+blackboard education, few books, few learning resources, isolated, very poor economically...BUT a democracy, strong desire to improve education, reasonably stable society, strong cultural traditions, acceptance of computer technology. I myself introduced the OLPCs to the WHH Board members there, with a solid day of training, and they in turn introduced them to the children in their care. I can vouch that after about six months, the children still use them every day in more ways than can be imagined! Their lives are changed forever for the better.

WE ARE LOOKING FOR MORE DONATED OLPCs. If you have "outgrown" yours, and it is in working condition, with power cord and preferably battery, consider donating it to us (as a bonus, it's a tax deductible charitable contribution). I'm going to Ghana in January and will personally make sure your machine is being used responsibly for real children! We do a clean rebuild and WHH has an inventory system to prevent theft. Maxwell and staff keep a close eye on comings and goings of all things computing at WHH.

To see some photos, go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/ghanatogether/GhanaTogetherBringsOLPCsToWHHChildrenSHomeInAximGhana02#

Thanks a lot! Please contact me if you'd like to discuss: Maryanne Ward, President Ghana Together, Ward.Maryanne@verizon.net (http://ghanatogether.org).

Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Children from Casa Guatemala with the volunteers

Casa Guatemala is a home for orphaned, abandoned, or abused children, located on the banks of the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. The orphanage provides education to over 250 children with the help of volunteers from around the world. These children would greatly benefit from the OLPC project.

For more information about Casa Guatemala, visit the Casa Guatemala website or contact us on administracion@casa-guatemala.org.

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DADAAB REFUGEE CAMPS

Dadaab, Kenya, is home to over 160,000 refugees mostly from Somalia. The camps are the site of a growing humanitarian crisis — first from a sharp increase in the number of new refugees arriving from Somalia, and most recently from disastrous flooding in the area. With all other problems that these refugees face, the eduction for the children is minimal. We appealing for support for these refugee kids to benefit from such things as XO computers. Please contact me at ahmedafarah@gmail.com to the work together to help even a few number of these kids to have a better day.

North America

• The non-profit collaboration North End Childrens Project is accepting donations of XOs for distribution to elementary school children

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6th graders at the Cambridge Friends School work with XOs after school.

• Hello Laptop, Hello World is a non-profit organization at Harvard College that promotes 1-to-1 computing in elementary and middle schools.

The team is running two pilot programs in the Boston area at the Mission Hill School and the Cambridge Friends School. Both pilots include teacher training and curriculum development. These pilots will serve as an outreach platform for future pilot programs in the Boston community. By developing training materials and curricula for teachers and students, Hello Laptop supports sustainable technology practices. The overall goal is to seamlessly integrate the XO into the classroom, so that it becomes a powerful tool for realizing creative potential. Please email mackenzie@hellolaptop.org and katelyn@hellolaptop.org to donate your XO laptop to our Boston pilot programs.

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Children using XO computers on a rural Arkansas school bus

• The Aspirnaut Initiative, a pilot program created to promote math and science education, takes advantage of time on long bus rides in rural school districts. The program could put your XO to good use. Students travel on buses connected to the Internet using cellular technology and are issued XOs and MacBooks (XOs for the younger children) on which they take online courses and engage in other online math and science activities. Started by Billy Hudson, PhD, a research biologist at Vanderbilt University, who grew up in rural Arkansas and saw the need to offer rural American students special opportunities to break in to science careers. www.aspirnaut.org Mail to Dr. Julie Hudson, Program Director, Vanderbilt University, 1161 21st Ave. S., D-3300 MCN, Nashville TN 37232-2104

Central America, Nicaragua

Children that had received scolar bag with material donated, in Los Zarzales Nicaragua

A small group of volunteers is working with student in Los Zarzales Leon Nicaragua this group is giving scolar materials and supervising it work, now here is begining the scolar period, but if you can donate equipment it will be welcome, and great help to develop students habilities. if you want pictures contact me lopez3101@yahoo.com

For computer science education

Secondary school learning projects

Columbus School for Girls Service Trip to Central America

Columbus School for Girls, an independent, all-girls school in central Ohio is engaged in a multi-year project where high school girls learn about the XO computer, then deliver a classroom set to a developing country. Students will be responsible for teaching the recipients how to use the computers as well as teach the teachers how the computer can support learning. Additional projects might include satellite dish networking, solar panel chargers, and annual deliveries of laptops.

Beginning in the fall of 2009, sixteen student began a year-long course to learn the content so that they will be prepared for delivery and teaching in May of 2010.

Please consider donating your laptop to this worthy project. Not only will you be able to donate your laptop to a child in a developing country, but you will also give high school girls a meaningful experience in IT – a field that is sorely lacking in women. Your donation gives twice!

For information, please contact Christine Murakami at [cmurakami@columbusschoolforgirls.org]

College learning projects

• please add your college learning project here to be the recipient of donated laptops directly from donors!

Other suggestions for donating to a child in need

You may want to consider donating your XO laptop to a homeless shelter or halfway home in your own community! There are usually children at these types of housing, especially housing for battered women, who could use the educational time away from their family affairs. Do a google search for local groups that are of interest to you!

Community software & content developers

Donate your XO Laptop to a software or learning content author by perusing the enclosed list.

Greater OLPC community

Local OLPC community groups could use donated computers for local projects, and might be able to follow up with users that get a donation, helping them get the most benefit from a donated XO.

• USA , see OLPC United States#User groups and unoffical groups
• International, see Regional groups
• Deployments lists countries that are deploying XOs.