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. 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.

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