OLPCorps Ashesi University Guinea Suleiman Toure
This team's proposal draft can also be downloaded as .pdf or .doc.
We are a team of 2 students, undergraduates in computer science major. Having learnt about the free laptop per child triggered our enthusiasm about it. It is high time that children in Africa developed a culture in the domain of IT. In this era of information the lack of basic education in IT is a stumbling block to the development of Africa so this is an opportunity to not only help children from various parts of Africa but considering the socio-economic aspect of some countries where children don’t have access to basic education help the most poor ones.
Our team came up with the idea to going to Guinea-Conakry a French speaking country. This is because one of the members of the team is from that country which put us in a good position to effectively conduct our duty. In Guinea most of the children don’t have access to basic education in computer learning that is because the country lacks proper scheme project like the free laptop per child and most importantly the lack of resources and conscience of the “digital world we live in”.
The children we are targeting are the ones encountering most economic hardship those are the ones living in various parts of the country (but not only them). The best way to have the attention of children from to 6 to 12 years is to make it playful just like video games. We are sure that by introducing a toy-like laptop to children they are going to enjoy learning while playing and it will take up most of their time and attention. One important aspect we considered is that in long vacation children will appreciate it more because we think specially children from 6 to 9 do not like to stay in school they always express the desire to stay at home and play. In that way we are sure that it is going to be successful. An NGO is ready to give full support to seeing to the project, it is called C.A.D a non-governmental organization for the rural community development. In each region we will organize with the help of the NGO and our local partners recreational activities for children, buy food for them and introduce the laptops. We will spend maximum of a week and take maximum 25 children ranging from 6 to 12 years old per region and train them for a maximum of 2 hours a day and we will spend 10 days in each region with the supervision of the NGO which will take over after we leave and will send us report of the progress of the training.
When leaving our team will give money of the amount of $2000 to the NGO which will ensure the continuity of the training.