Ethiopian Millenium Gift Project

THE ETHIOPIAN MILLENNIUM GIFT PROJECT

Help needed in the following sites

you can register (not mandatory) and start contributing.

• Ubuntu Linux Dapper drake, because of the launchpad facility. You can join the Ubuntu amharic team and let your karma be counted. Put your name on the greatest gift of the millennium.
• Edubuntu
• Amharic wikipedia A free and colaborative produced Amahric online encyclopedia that can also be distributed on a CD or other media.
• Amharic Wiktionary An online free Amharic dictionary and a sister project of wikipedia.

The objective

To provide effective educational tools and solutions to Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Millennium project will have 3 phases

The Development phase

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• Period: from the present time to Ethiopian calendar year 2000
• Work to be done:
  • Building the development infrastructure.
  • Active development of the tools.
  • Building support infrastructure.
  • Preparing the first phase of products to be delivered to the users.

The Support and strengthening phase

---

• Period: 2000-2010
• work to be done
  • Further development of the tools
  • Supporting the tools that are delivered
  • Expanding the delivery to 100% of the population
  • Building the support structure so that it becomes self sustaining

The happily ever after phase

---

• Period: 2010-
• Work to be done:
  • The project is expected to have a fully functioning dynamic echo system that needs little or no centralised structure.

የሺህ ዓመት ስጦታ ኢትዮጵያ A gift that lasts a thousand year

1. One of the poorest country in the world
2. One of the lowest computer penetration levels in the world
3. One of the lowest Internet and mobile penetration levels in the world
4. Uses a unique alphabet
5. Uses a unique calendar

• which needs some amount of development investment by software companies. The likely hood of that happening is slim due to problem no1 above. No one would invest on a market that has no money.

Even if computers trickle in to Ethiopia some how (which is not happening) they are of no use for an ordinary Ethiopian child who do not understand much English. The software companies will not be rushing to build computers for Ethiopian children since there will not be money in it. The present system is condemns every Ethiopian child to computer darkness, for forseeable future.

light in the tunnel

But we are in a very unique time, and opportunity has presented itself to change all this. For those who do not know, at the moment the calender year in Ethiopia is 1998. The Ethiopian millennium comes on September 11th 2008. (Don’t mind the date. You cannot imagine how painful for Ethiopians that dreadful day was.) That means the Ethiopian Millennium is going to be in about one and half year from now. And there are about 1.5 million Ethiopians living abroad. Most of those Ethiopians are educated and could help in many ways. Out of those Ethiopians with the most conservative estimate about 100 000 will be celebrating the Ethiopian millennium in Ethiopia.

What The Millennium Gift Project does?

The millennium gift project for the next one and half year prepares a gift of one laptop computer by one travelling Ethiopian for one Ethiopian child to be presented for the millennium celebration.

This project organizes a massive localization and translation project with the participation of all capable Ethiopians, free and open source software developers, institutions such as universities and colleges. Helping with organizing, coding, translating, identifying recipients and donors and contributing money.

The software’s to be localized and translated to at least one Ethiopian language are

• Ubuntu Linux Dapper drake, because of the launchpad facility
• Edubuntu
• Amharic wikipedia A free and colaborative produced Amahric online encyclopidia that can also be destributed on a CD or other media.
• Amharic Wiktionary An online free Amharic dictionary and a sister project of wikipedia.

Hardware

• One laptop per child computer
• Any laptop computer
• Any capable desktop computer
• Servers for schools
• Communication and Networking Equipment

Recipients

• Schools
• Classes
• Students

Teferra 05:12, 27 May 2006 (EDT)

External link

Here is a link to a webspace about Ethiopian computing.

http://www.geez.org/

Ethiopic page in this wiki

• Ethiopic

OLPC Ethiopia page in this wiki

• OLPC Ethiopia

The addition of the OLPC Ethiopia page has not been done by the management. It is simply another member of the community adding the page so that you have somewhere to place more information in the hope that it helps your campaign.

Which languages or languages are to be used?

Which language or languages are to be used? There are about 81 Languages presently spoken in Ethiopia. (Obviously we are not going to target all of them.) The process of choosing the language should be decided through the process. Though there are many factors that are going to decide which languages are going to be "available" for the Ethiopian millennium, the number of volunteers that commit their resources would be the deciding factor.Obviously there should be a possibility for every one to work on his/her choice of language. If we take the number of speakers of the language as an indicator then the fallowing would be the top 10.

1. Amharic
2. Afan Oromo
3. Welayta (and related languages)
4. Tigraway
5. Somali .
6. Gurage
7. Sidama
8. Afar
9. Hadiyya (and Related languages)
10. Kafa (and related languages)

But that is the most optimistic scenario. The realistic figure for the millennium would be a completed Amharic product and a partialy completed Afan Oromo, Wolayta and Tigraway.

Do they all use the Ethiopic script? Except Afan Oromo that uses officially Latin script since 1991 all others use the Ethiopic script. But my guss is there will be people who would like to contribute to an Afan Oromo ethiopic version too. If the tools are provided the volunteers would show which direction the projects would go.--Teferra 13:41, 27 May 2006 (EDT)

Localization experience

The program Application Program: Test of ability with arithmetic may or may not become produced, yet if you wish to try adding some strings for localizing into one or more Ethiopian Languages you are welcome to do so.