OLPCorps Middlebury College Egypt

The Middlebury College team is made up of the following students:

Matthew Groh is a rising senior at Middlebury College pursuing an economics major and Arabic and mathematics minors. He has spent the last 9 months studying abroad in Alexandria, Egypt where he has volunteered time to work on a village development project with Rotaract.

David Hamberlin is also a rising senior at Middlebury college pursuing an Arabic major. He has spent the last 9 months studying abroad in Alexandria, Egypt where he has worked part-time as a translator for the Library of Alexandria.

Monica Abrudan is a graduate student pursuing her Master's degree in social development studies. She has a BA in computer science from Babes Boylai University in Romania.

Ahmed Sabry is a pharmaceutical major at the University of Alexandria, Egypt and a resident of Oreen (the target village).

Brief Summary

The Middlebury team will work with the Nozha New Era Rotaract Club to deploy 100 XO laptops to the children at the elementary school in Oreen -- 90 minutes from Alexandria by car. Ahmed is our established connection to the town, and we have already made arrangements to use the elementary school this summer as the classroom facilities. The residents of Oreen are very excited at the prospects of this project, and we feel confident in our ability to not just deploy laptops, but teach how the laptops can open up the world to these children. Communication will be very easy because Ahmed is a native speaker, and Matthew and David are both nearly fluent in Egyptian colloquial. Rotaract has pledged to provide us with at least one additional teacher per day which will provide our project with the infrastructure to implement individualized learning exercises (10 children per class).

Monica will handle all technical aspects of the project, and she will eventually create a website on which we will publish the children's projects.

We have also established a relation with eduWeavers in order to give the school of Oreen the opportunity to partner with a school in the U.S. for cultural exchanges and global learning.

If any one has any suggestions for us, please feel free to e-mail us at olpcorpsmiddlebury(at)gmail(dot)com

Current Draft of Our Proposal

OLPCorps: Middlebury College Egypt

   Our team consists of Matthew Groh and David Hamberlin -- rising seniors from Middlebury College majoring in economics and Arabic, respectively, Monica Abrudan, a software developer with a BA in computer science currently pursuing a Master's degree in development studies at the University of East Anglia , and Ahmed Sabry, a pharmaceutical major from the University of Alexandria and a local resident of the target village. We have teamed up with the Rotaract Club of Alexandria , Middlebury School in Alexandria and eduWeavers to establish an OLPCorps project in the village of Oreen in the governorate of Beheira, which is located an hour and a half away from Alexandria by car. The project's target start date will be June 28th, immediately after the school year ends in Oreen, and it will last nine weeks until August 27th.

   In order to create an environment for complete cultural immersion, Matthew and David will live in the village of Oreen. After living in Egypt for nine months, Matthew and David are highly proficient in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and Ahmed is a native speaker who is also nearly fluent in English. Many of the residents of Oreen have never met a foreigner before, let alone one they can question in their own tongue, so the simple contact between us and the village will be an amazing cultural exchange and opportunity to extend this project's benefits throughout the community. 

   The Middlebury School in Alexandria will receive the 250 kg package and provide us with a storage place until the laptops are completely distributed. Monica will handle all the technical aspects of set-up. The principal of the elementary school, Abdal Mohesen Atallah, has given us permission to use the elementary school. Matthew and David have visited the village, and Ahmed has talked with many of his neighbors who have all met our project proposal with excitement.

   The four of us will be teaching full-time -- Sunday through Thursday from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at the local elementary school -- along with several members of Rotaract who will rotate teaching to ensure that we always have a minimum staff of five teachers every day. This will allow us to cap each class at 10 children in order to give the students individualized attention. Our lessons will revolve around the computers and consist of three general subjects: basic computer skills, basic and computer specific English, and the internet. Our aim is to teach the basics of computers and provide our students with a key to open up the world around them. In addition, we will create a blog to document our daily activities and publish the student's creative works to reveal that the children can also share their experiences with the outside world. The local teachers are very excited about our project, and we plan on working closely with them to exchange ideas on how they can integrate computer based learning into their curriculum. 

   After we complete our summer work, Rotaract will continue working with the children of Oreen by overseeing the project through bi-weekly visits to Oreen where Rotaract members will give follow-up computer workshops and assist in communication between the school of Oreen and its future "partner school" in the United States. We hope to find this "partner school" through our partnership with eduWeavers, which will allow the students to participate in cultural exchanges, adding another aspect of utility to the computers and contributing to the continuity of our program. Furthermore, the Middlebury School in Alexandria wants to make Oreen its "partner" village, which would mean students studying abroad from Middlebury would participate in monthly cultural exchanges in Oreen and have the opportunity to join Rotaract for its biweekly follow-up sessions. Furthermore, this is Ahmed's village, so our team has a personal stake in this project's success. Ahmed returns to his village every two weeks to spend the weekend with his family, and he will personally be around in the long-run to ensure that the summer's success multiplies in the coming years. 

   Through our OLPCorps project, we hope that by giving children a window to the outside world at a young age, we can help them grow up with the idea that their culture is one of many and anything is possible if they put their mind to it.