University of Miami Mauritania OLPC

School: University of Miami, Florida

Team Members: Stephanie Selvick & Sydney Owens

Deployment Location: Kiffa & Kankossa, Mauritania

We are a team of two African literature Ph.D. students / lecturers at the University of Miami looking to empower the next generation of African women in Mauritania. In particular, we have teamed up with a group of Peace Corps volunteers who support 22 Girl’s Mentoring Centers across the country. While these centers are currently run by both Peace Corps and local Mauritanian volunteers, the goal of local, long-term sustainability means these centers will be solely run by Mauritanians in the near future. At present, the mentoring centers execute several practical (such as, cooking and sewing) and educational (such as, foreign languages and sciences) curriculum for females who don’t have the means to afford schooling. My teammate and I believe that allowing these females access to laptop technology is an important step toward minimizing the gender gap in the fields of science and technology. In addition, these laptops will give young girls an avenue to explore their creativity and express their identities.

Proposal: First Draft

Motivation

A team of two from the University of Miami, Florida have teamed up with Peace Corps volunteers in Mauritania to deploy XO laptops to two of the twenty-two Girl’s Mentoring Centers (GMC's)[1]across the country. Specifically, we will be working with thirty-five 6-12 year old females in Kiffa [2] and sixty-four in Kankossa [3] for nine weeks from June-August, 2009. While several GMC’s in larger cities have witnessed and assisted Mauritanian females further their education via university, there has only been one female in Kiffa specifically known to continue her education at the college level. In addition, working in these two rural sites guaranteed 1:1 laptop saturation. We believe access to and ownership of XO laptop technology at a young age will enable females in Kiffa and Kankossa to take control of their own education, thus empowering the next generation of African women, their families, and Mauritania. In doing so, OLPC and Peace Corps will be helping to reduce the educational gender gap in Mauritania, while simultaneously allowing these females an avenue to develop creatively and academically. The GMC’s are currently run by both PCV’s and local Mauritanian volunteers; while PCV’s will remain at the GMC’s for one year following our departure, the goal of local, long-term sustainability means these centers will be solely run by Mauritanians in the near future.

Collaboration

We hope to collaborate with two other OLPC groups applying to work in Mauritania. Our vision is that by connecting females among the various GMC sites via XO laptops, they will begin to inspire and motivate each other to achieve the goals they set for themselves. Illiteracy is a challenge when working with youth in Mauritania. As such, we have organized with the Cornell OLPC group to implement a pen-pal system between our sites to encourage writing, reading, and exploring their own culture in various languages. By making connections to other regions in Mauritania, they will begin to unravel the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual country of their birth while improving reading and writing skills. All 22 GMC’s in Mauritania have internet access, as well as one or more volunteers who serve as technical support for the multi-media and computer classes. This volunteer will provide technical support during our deployment period and will continue to work and maintain the XO laptops at the GMC’s following our departure. In addition to technical support, each GMC site will also have several bilingual PCV’s who will function as translators between my team and the local youth and GMC mentors.

Eco-Health Camp

There is an opportunity to introduce XO laptops to a group of 40 Mauritanian females coming to the Kankossa GMC site in July. This youth group will stay at the GMC for one week to attend an annual Eco-Health Camp to discuss the environment and other health topics. This collaboration of diverse Mauritanian youth with their environment could be greatly affected by access to XO laptop technology. While communication with the leaders of this camp is necessary to discuss specific curricular details, activities such as “Moon,” as well as content collections, such as “nature images,” “biology,” and “world factbook maps” are just a few ways XO laptops could motivate these females to become agents of environmental change.

“My Story”

As Ph.D students in African literature, we know the value of documenting oral stories and histories from rural areas in continental Africa that have been left largely unnoticed. While this act of documentation is beneficial for reading publics, we believe it is more important for youth to become individual agents of story-telling. The primary goal of this project is inspire youth to become agents of their own life stories, thus becoming agents of change. Since literacy constitutes a challenge, we plan to utilize XO microphones for oral recitation of any personal story each female deems important. The paint capabilities of XO could be used to add visual dynamics to oral components. One long-term goal of “My Story” is to have each female transfer her own oral story to the written page. Access to “speak” may serve to motivate these females to learn writing skills while hearing their story spoken by their XO. We plan to collect these stories on either the OLPC videowiki or on a collaborative website which could be used by other OLPC groups looking to deploy similar projects in their regions.

Fundraising

We are in the process of fundraising and have written letters to Rotary International, Lions Club International [4], and Kiwanis International [5]. As a former Rotary Youth Exchange Student, Stephanie has permission to contact and give power point presentations to several Rotary Clubs in district 6220 [6] in conjunction with fundraising for OLPC Mauritania. In addition, we plan to contact and pool resources with several University of Miami organizations, such as the African Student’s Union [7], Amnesty International UM Chapter [8], and the National Organization for Women Campus Action Network (NOWCAN)[9].