OLPC South Africa

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Old content archived at OLPC South Africa/Archive

OLPC in South Africa

Kliptown Youth Program (KYP)

  • Location: Kliptown, Soweto
  • KYP director: Thulani Madondo
  • Project organizers: Hannah and Julia Weber; Boston, MA
  • Website: Kliptown Youth Program

March 2008: This effort was formally launched with the delivery of 100 XO laptops on March 13 and 14, 2008. Martin Mulcahy, special advisor to Minister of Education Nalendi Pandor, provided electronic books for the laptops through Ithuba books in early 2008. Senior government officials Jennifer Rault-Smith and Palesa Tyobeka implemented the process for delivery of the materials. Whitney Hunter-Thomson, a student at Williams College, worked in South Africa in early 2008 to prepare for the March launch. Matt Keller, OLPC Director for EMEA, identified Kwesi Smith from the Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in Accra, Ghana as one who could help with training on the laptops. Smith attended the launch and helped to implement the network and set up the laptops.

August 2008: A Microsoft advertising team led by Pamela Kaplan filmed the KYP youth with their laptops in Kliptown.

November 2008: 150 XOs were delivered to KYP. Neo Masilo, an IT consultant who ran an Internet café in Walter Sisulu Square, joined KYP full-time to train teachers and students on the laptops. Masilo trained three South Africans on the technicalities and logistics of setting up laptops in schools. They have joined KYP and have been introduced to David Cavallo, who is managing the deployment of XOs in Rwanda.

eSibonisweni primary school / Saint Mark’s school

  • Location: Kwangwanase, Manguzi KZN
  • South African contact: Thulani Madondo, Kliptown Youth Programme
  • Project organizers: Jennifer Getz, Wayne Getz, Stacy Kertsman; San Francisco, CA

Jennifer Getz of St. Mark’s school and Stacey Kertsman have been working to partner U.S. schools with poor schools in South Africa as part of their effort to deliver XOs to South African children. This effort was initiated with the partnership of Saint Mark’s in San Francisco with rural primary school eSibonisweni in KZN. In October 2008, 100 laptops were delivered to eSibonisweni via Thulani Madondo, who heads the Kliptown Youth Programme.

Getz has been working with Dylan Wray of Boston-based organization Facing History and Ourselves to train teachers at eSibonisweni on the laptops. In January 2009, students will begin to use the laptops. Wray has also drawn up a proposal for joint-curriculum ventures between township high schools and U.S. high schools, many of which already employ Facing History to enrich their programs. In San Francisco, Getz and Kertsman recently presented their partnership plan to a number of schools in the San Francisco area and have set up several follow-up meetings.

Getz and her husband Wayne have also met with government officials in South Africa who oversee Education. Getz met with Gail Weldon, head of professional development for the Western Cape Education Department and Phumla Satyo, head of technology for education in the Western Cape. She has also been in touch with the head of curriculum development in Cape Province.

Getz and Kertsman are also in touch with an NGO in South Africa that creates electronic math-related curriculum in multiple languages.

Haenertsburg area schools / Indiana University

Location: Limpopo province South African contact: Thulani Madondo, Kliptown Youth Programme Project organizers: Paul Commons, Kelly Trimble

Blog: One Here... One There

Paul Commons is President of the One Here One There (OHOT) group at Indiana University. OHOT worked with Shelley Milstein of the Thusanang Trust in Limpopo to purchase and deliver 100 laptops to schools in the Haenertsburg area in August 2008. Kelly Trimble of OHOT and students from the university stayed in South Africa for two weeks to train teachers and students on the laptops. Neo Masilo, the IT person for the Kliptown project, helped with deployment here as well.

As part of OLPC’s Give One Get One (G1G1) North American fundraising campaign, students at Indiana University delivered an additional 200 laptops to children in two rural schools in South Africa.

Shamaluka Foundation

South African contact: Gareth Armstrong Project organizer: Larry Weber

OLPC delivered 10 XO laptops to Chair of the Rand Merchant Bank’s Shamaluka Foundation, Paul Harris. Gareth Armstrong, who is in corporate finance at the Rand Bank, attended the Kliptown launch of behalf of Harris in March 2008. Armstrong gave Larry a hard copy presentation on the Shamaluka Foundation which illustrates its funding role for the Penreach programme as well as its ongoing education initiatives. He also distributed the 10 XO laptops among colleagues so they could test them out. Their biggest concern was the unfamiliar operating system. Specific questions related to OLPC’s approach to hardware support, warranties, replacement costs, alternative power set-ups, and the stability of the operating system. The Shamaluka Foundation is considering investing in 150,000 more XOs.

OLPC-ZA

OLPC-ZA is a grassroots mailing list to promote OLPC and related projects in South Africa.

Local activities include:

Morgan Collett worked for OLPC as a software engineer until the recent layoffs. He continues to develop Sugar on a volunteer basis and is the primary maintainer of several Sugar components.

Marco Rosa in Cape Town is keen to start a local non-profit organization to do local fundraising and coordination with deployments.

Getting involved

Here are some ways to get involved locally:

  • Find organisations willing to donate, to raise funds to run a deployment in the Western Cape. Minimum order is 100 XOs through the Give Many program, and someone must take responsibility for doing the deployment - and additional things are required too like access points, internet connectivity, generators, server for the school, etc.
We are in the process of setting up a local non-profit organisation to coordinate this. Contact us at the email address below if you want to participate in this.
  • Work with educators, educational organisations, on the Sugar software (the educational platform used on the XOs) - get them set up with it on say Ubuntu on conventional computers, get them involved in using/testing the software and giving feedback
  • Produce local content: Sugar includes a PDF Reader which can be used to display content like text books. Some countries have even scanned existing text books. The XOs may include sections of Wikipedia content which has been reformatted for offline use.
  • Translate the Sugar software into local languages.

Or you can get involved in the global project:

You can apply through the contributors program to get an XO for a specific project.

Contact details

If you want to engage in discussion with everyone interested in OLPC (and related projects) in South Africa, join the olpc-za mailing list. You will then receive copies of mails sent to the list.

Summary

Primary Language ,|x|Language spoken::x}}
Number of Laptops Number of manufactured laptops::650
Keyboard Layout Keyboard::OLPC English Keyboard
Build ,|x|Software release::x}}
Date(s) Arrived in Country ,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}}
School Server ,|x|School server status::x}}
Deployment Status Deployment status::650 XOs
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