OLPC Bangladesh

What's happening? -- Micro-Deployments in Bangladesh?

There is an OLPC Bangladesh mailing list which up to January 2011, has been largely inactive. I suggest that everyone sign up and begin to communicate with one another regularly. (George Hunt)

http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-bangladesh

A fan page has been created to foster, cultivate and develop a fan base for this effort in Bangladesh.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/OLPC-Bangladesh/131357564135

George Hunt, a support volunteer, visited Bangladesh in January 2010, and has made some Travel notes. He will continue to be active in adding to the contact information which follows. Feel free to update and add to this page. Or you can send him updates, corrections, pictures, etc and he will add them. (George is at georgejhunt(atsign)gmail(com suffix)

Sharing Contact Information Between Bangladeshi Activists

The following people have agreed to have their information, which was sent to OLPC, made public. Feel free to update or add your contact information. And I will reference this page when there is correspondence and requests for information from OLPC.

---

Jamil Ahmed --www.Ankur.org.bd

George Hunt met with Jamil,the Director of Ankur, while he was in Dhaka. The Ankur web site has a lot of information about teacher training that was just in the planning states when he was there in early 2010. see http://www.ankur.org.bd/wiki/Home

Ankur has been active in translation of open source tools, Firefox, Gnome Desktop, and the development of Bangla fonts. Ankur is funded by a Spanish development program, has a 15 person staff, and has already contributed to the internalionalization of many Sugar Activities. Ankur's initial focus has been on tools and digital infastructure, but it is beginning to work on teacher training, and has sponsored workshops for educators.

(I happened to take a photo of the white board while I was at Ankur which shows Ankur's plans to develop tranining materials for educators see http://picasaweb.google.com/jess.ganas/BangladeshOLPCVisit2010#5436245603287983442 --George Hunt).

---

Tanvir Mohammad

RT 69693 <cut and pasted>

It's ok with me if you redirect the queries from Bangladesh to me. I can surely use some help form interested people over here since I often got patched up with my professional works.

I'm trying to comes up with a coordinates project. From my point of view in countries like Bangladesh where resources are limited, we need to accommodate multiple ideas in one. So we're trying to combine a agriculture knowledge base and content repository for OLPC framework. I talked with some govt. officials about it and they are really interested on this idea and as a result Bangladesh Agriculturist Institution join with us and we are starting the primary training program from January.

I've some detailed plan on these. I like to share it with you guys if your are interested.

Tanvir Mohammad
Chief Technology Officer
+880 167 1675652

Beyond Technologies House 71, Road 7, Block H, Banani, Dhaka-1213, Bangladesh Phone: (880) 2 989 7274, Cell: (880) 1716 059 526, (880) 1819 544 944 Email: info(atsign)beyondtechbd(com suffix)
Web: www.beyondtechbd.com

---

Maung Nyeu

RT 72975

Hello,

I'm Maung Nyeu and I'm intrigued by OLPC and its potential. I would like to request information specific to OLPC implementation.

Currently, I live in California USA and employed in engineering and finance industry. I have a graduate degree in engineering and a business MBA. I grew up in a nomadic tribe in remote corners of Chittagong Hill Tracts, near the borders of Bangladesh and Myanmar. In many remote areas children live in extreme poverty, schools are sparsely located, and in some areas, there are no schools within walking distance. As an immigrant and native of Chittagong Hill Tracts, I feel a compelling need to bring the light of education to those children. My answer to this problem was that I funded a non-profit organization and established an orphanage residential school. This year, we provided support for education of seventy-two primary school children.

At this point, I'm interested in exploring opportunities OLPC can provide to children in remote areas. I'm also interested in knowing OLPC success stories and challenges in reaching children in remote areas I'm well aware of structural and regulatory issues in a third world country. However, the alternative is to leave the children uneducated, which is unthinkable.

I'd be honored to speak with someone within the OLPC organization regarding these issues. Please provide me with a contact name and number and a convenient time to reach you.

Thank you in advance. Please keep up the good work. The world needs OLPC.

Warm Regards and Happy Holidays!

Maung Nyeu
maugn (atsign) gmail (com suffix)
949.510.3763

---

Nafis M. Ghani

RT 38623

Please send [people] my email Address. I do not have much of an access to Chittagong though.

However, I personally know a person from Bhairab (Kishorganj District) who has dedicated his entire life in setting up primary school and college and student dormitory. The fees of the school along with dormitory/food is absolutely nominal. His main aim is to educate poor students. There are near about 3000 students in his education institute.

Interesting part is, he pours all his personal income in the development of his school. He uses the entire tuition fees for the development of the schools solely.

You would be able to capture good amount of crowd if you organize the program in Bhairab for sure.

Please do let me know if I can come to any of your help.

Nafis

Nafis M. Ghani
"mi.wg" <mi.wg.bd (at sign)gmail (dot com suffix)
CEO Wiseman Guidance
Phone: +8801713034196

---

Ayeleen

RT 43385

On Tue Jan 04 22:50:27 2011,
ayeleen (at sign) friendship-bd (dot org suffix)
wrote: > Hi George, > Thank you for your reply - yes, you can put my e-mail address on the > listserv and also give it to people who are interested in funding and > starting projects in Bangladesh. > Thanks, > -ayeleen Hi,

We at Friendship would like to explore ways in which we can partner with OCOL. We work in the river banks and char areas of Bangladesh in health, education, relief and income generation. We would like to expand our primary education program and start secondary school programs and would like to explore opportunities with OCOL.

---

Nancy Hoque

RT 48843

From: Nancy Hoque
<nancyjhossain (at sign) gmail (dot com suffix)>

George,

Very recently, our AABEA team has partnered up with ORCA to package new computers, printers and monitors to create an Orphanage Computer Center in Chittagong. Its already up and running.

You may pass along my contact. What is the progress of implementing OLPC in Bangladesh?

Thanks,
Nancy

---

Mahamud Hasan (Shamim)

Md. Mahamud Hasan (Shamim)
Chairman
Maitri International School
Dutta Bhaban, College Road,
Debidwar, Comilla
Mobile: 01712-248403
E-mail: mahamud.bep (at sign) gmail (dot com suffix)

Dear Sir, Good Morning!!! I will introduce myself as Md. Mahamud Hasan (Shamim), Chairman, Maitri School, Debidwar, Comilla. The school was established in 2000. Our school has 210 students. Most of them are from underprivileged background. There is 14 teaching staff in the school.

We are running this school Not for Profit purpose. Recognizing our school's performance, this year British Council has included in its* Global School Partnership Programme (GSP). *Under GSP, *Marine Park Primary School, London

• is our partner School in UK.

There are few local benevolent persons who offer scholarships to some of the ultra poor children in our school*.*

---

Maja Najdic and Monishankar Singha

Dear Mr Hunt, yes, you have our permission to pass on our email and phone number to others doing deployments in Bangladesh:

Maja Najdic, E: maja_najdic (at sign) yahoo (dot com sufrfix), M: +386 40 712 712
Monishankar Singha, E: ms.singha (at sign) yahoo (dot com sufrfix), M: +386 31 684 942

The activities useful with the XOs in orphanage would be firstly learning the technology, how can they apply this technology to their daily school life activites and later the teachers can give us some proposals for the activities useful with the laptops.

We have to ask you to send us contact info for the ones in Comilla and ones for the tecnical scills. We were in Bangladesh in october 2009 and there we bought a computer but the electricity was going on only 2,5 hours per day with the interruptions. The internet access is provided by the Gramin link, wireless internet receiver through usb. They do not have electricity connection in every classroom. For the wi-max we do not have any information yet.