OLPCorps Georgetown Kenya
Team Members:
Sarah Ancas: Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, Class of 2009
Leslie Gordon: Georgetown University, College of Arts and Sciences, Class of 2009 and University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, MSc Candidate, 2010.
About us:
We are two Georgetown University students of African studies, who studied abroad together in Tanzania in the summer of 2007. Both of us speak at least an intermediate level of Kiswahili, and we have closely studied the social and political culture of East Africa in our classes at Georgetown and our time abroad.
Work Plan:
We plan to deploy the 100 laptops with the help of the Children of Kibera Foundation, directed by Ken Okoth, a Swahili professor from Georgetown as well as a native of Kibera. These laptops have yet to take hold in Kenya and we see this as a valuable opportunity to share this new and exciting technology with a disadvantaged community that could truly benefit from it, able to put this technology to work for their own needs and for their own empowerment.
<googlemap version="0.9" lat="-1.311411" lon="36.784512" zoom="17"> -1.313305, 36.784644, www.childrenofkibera.org Children of Kibera Foundation Red Rose School </googlemap>
We will work primarily with the Red Rose School in Kibera, which is directly run by the Children of Kibera foundation. Red Rose serves over one hundred of the poorest and most vulnerable children in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, with its Childrens' Center and school classes, as well as with the sponsorships it provides for a select group of high school students.
Ken and the students and teachers at Red Rose have already started to use technology to share their stories through blogs, photo albums, penpal programs, and online books. We believe that with the help of the teachers at Red Rose, the new XO laptops would facilitate this process and allow the students to connect with each other, as well as with students in the States from an even earlier age in a more direct way. We can use Ken's connections to the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, where he teaches, to expand the existing penpal program. Red Rose students could take their laptops home with them, allowing their family members to get involved in the discussion with their new American friends.
Children of Kibera also relies on sponsorships to pay for uniforms and school fees for over 50 orphans and vulnerable children. With the help of the XO laptops, these students would be able to share stories and photos with their sponsors, communicating directly with them, and forging permanent bonds with the people upon whom they rely. Although this could serve to help CofK raise money, its primary purpose would to facilitate cross-cultural communication by allowing the students to connect directly with their American benefactors.
Our plan is to allocate between 80 and 90 laptops to the Red Rose School in Kibera, where they will be the property of the school, and they can remain in the school's computer lab. The teachers at Red Rose are already trained on PC and Apple computers, and we are comfortable that we can train them on the XO hardware and software once we have received the OLPC training in Kigali. We would also hire and train a computer teacher who could continue the project after our ten weeks in Nairobi have ended, and we allocated a year's salary for this teacher in this budget, as well as the necessary money to pay for the extra electricity the computers would require. We see this aspect of the project as a critical part of continuity and creating local ownership of this effort.
During our ten weeks in Nairobi, we plan to work systematically to integrate the XO laptops into the existing technology-related programs at the Red Rose School. Because of our experience with internet-based social networking and research, we can work with Red Rose's teachers and administrators to incorporate projects with the laptops into the Red Rose curriculum and into activities in the Children's Center. Project themes may focus on the processes of globalization, international interconnectivity, development or cross-cultural sharing, all of which students can engage their community, both locally and ouside their borders, to learn more about themselves and others.
Once we get the program in Kibera started, we plan to then incorporate the Salve Regina School, a small, underfunded school located outside of Nairobi which has received books and supplies before from Children of Kibera. Our communications so far with Greg Karungo, from Salve Regina, have been promising, as Mr. Karungo has assured us that the school has one teacher who is computer-literate and is willing to serve as a point-person on our program to help Salve Regina utilize the XO laptops. These laptops could serve as a way to link rural and urban students, as well as to give the more isolated young students from Salve Regina a way to access the worldwide community that sits on their doorstep, just out of reach, in Nairobi. In our conversations with Mr. Karungo, he has assured us that the 20-odd 6-12 year old students would be eager to use the laptops, and that the teacher would be available for training when the school is on break in August.
We believe fully in the Children of Kibera Foundation's mission to empower vulnerable students through education, and we hope that these XO laptops, as well as our work plan to help the students use the internet for education and cultural exchange, will add to the positive affect that the Foundation is having in Kibera.
Budget:
| Item | Total |
|---|---|
| Airfare for Leslie, DC-Kigali-Nairobi-DC | $2,000 |
| Airfare for Sarah, DC-Kigali-Nairobi-DC | $2,000 |
| Sublet of a 2 bedroom flat in Nairobi | $600/month= $1,200 |
| Food and Transportation in Nairobi for both team members | $1,500 |
| Salary for the New Computer Teacher | $200/month= $2,400 for a year's salary |
| Electricity for the Computer Lab | $150/month= $1,800 for a year |