OLPCorps GeorgiaInstituteofTechnology Mauritania

We are a group of 3 Industrial Engineering seniors from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. We will be working with Peace Corps Girls Mentoring Centers (GMC's) operating in Mauritania.

Girls’ Education and Empowerment:
Peace corps has 28 volunteers in the Girls’ Empowerment and Education sector, which oversee the day-to-day operations of 22 Girls’ Mentoring Centers (GMC), which serve over 1000 female secondary school students across the country. The GMC initiative is quite specific to Peace Corps Mauritania and is a cornerstone in our approach to supporting girls' education and schooling in a country where 50% of the girls enrolled in the first grade will not make it to the seventh (or the first year of secondary school) and only 73 girls out of 1000 will get a diploma enabling them to secure decent employment. Girls' retention and graduation rates in secondary and higher education represent a serious challenge for the Government of Mauritania.

What we plan to do:
We plan to coordinate with the Peace Corps Volunteers and Girl’s Mentoring Centers (GMCs) in Mauritania. The GMCs provide educational and life skills courses to promising female students. Our team believes in the cause of better education for girls and the Peace Corps Mauritania GMC program is an excellent match. We hope to draw on GMC students as mentors to help teach the younger students how to use the XO laptops. Peace Corps Volunteers have made it clear that it is possible to find enough children within the 6-12 age limit during the summer months since school will be out.

Based on discussions with PCVs, Ginger Tissier and Will Ryan, we concluded that we would like achieve three main objectives through this project:
1) Provide entertaining, intelligent and simple learning tools through the XO laptop
2) Teach the children how to use XO to find reference material to increase their knowledge
3) Ensure that the support and learning continues long after the project is over.


Our emphasis will be to teach children not only to use the XO for learning but also to explore and find more creative ways to increase their knowledge. We believe an important way to get the children involved is to engage them through creative programs that help them in their schoolwork and make learning fun. The reference material provided on the computers can also help them learn about the larger world and expand their knowledge and imagination.

The team so far:
I say that because is all about team work and involving Peace Corps volunteers, the local community and the kids. So we hope our team grows as we go on.

Jennifer Rose Lin: Senior Industrial Engineering student with plenty of experience in the community service field. She has traveled to China, Peru with various organizations. She also spent a summer working for the Lymphoma and Leukemia society. She is very enthusiastic and helpful no matter what kind of service.

Roshan G. Chandiramani: Senior Industrial Engineering student with experience in a professional fraternity, social service organizations and as a community adviser at Georgia Tech. He is smart and genuinely helpful. He was the first one to actually convince others to form a team.

Arhant Durlabhji: Senior Industrial Engineering student with some corporate internship experience, hates it. Doesn't want to do 9-5 job and loves to work for a humane cause. Family runs a hospice for the terminally ill in India, arhant is a permanent volunteer. Providing good education for kids and opening a orphanage in India feature on his bucket list.

I hope our proposal is accepted and we will be able to do some good work.