Graduate student from Yucaipa wins One Laptop Per Child grant

The One Laptop per Child Association developed a low-cost laptop--the "XO Laptop"--to revolutionize children's education. Their mission is "to provide educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning."

Members of the Tulane OLPC team will deploy 100 XO laptops and implement a summer education program in Kenema, the capitol of the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone, this June. The project will target vulnerable children, such as orphans and street children, and will integrate health information with computer skills.

Topics and activities will be student led, and may include mapping the distance between clean water sources, researching how to protect against malaria, or investigating the nutritional composition of their diets.

The project will also encourage the collaboration of children with other siblings and family members, expanding the program impact and empowering the community to help children learn. Tulane OLPC will partner with a local organization, Defense for Children International-Sierra Leone (http://www.dci-is.org/), to implement the project.

Past projects with XO laptops have seen dramatic increases in school attendance as children begin to understand and explore their own potential. But beyond education, XO laptop projects that target the most isolated children may also help promote peace in post-conflict settings.

Matt Keller, of OLPC, explains in a recent CNN article that by putting laptops "into the hands of kids who would otherwise be indoctrinated, we can make the case pretty successfully that doing this is a long-term solution to root causes."

Though Sierra Leone is considered safe after its brutal civil war that ended in 2001, the effect of the war is still clearly visible as families work to resettle and the country works to rebuild its infrastructure.

Joseph Zombo, of Defense for Children International-Sierra Leone, stresses the importance of education in general and the Tulane OLPC team's XO laptop project in particular for post-war children in Kenema.

"I want this to happen for the sake of the children," he says. "They have lost so much, their future is uncertain. I see education as one way to give them hope in life and this project as a way to let them know that people in the world care about them."

The team includes recent masters of public health (MPH) graduates from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (Katie McCarthy '08, Katie Robinette '09, Chelsea Williams '09, Emily Cercone '09), and a masters student in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California Davis (James Kohne).

Three of the team members, including Robinette, completed internships for their MPH degrees in Kenema, Sierra Leone last summer and were inspired to apply for this grant by the incredible drive of the children that they met there and their insatiable desire to learn about the world around them (see attached photo).

Tulane OLPC's website, which includes the information on the project, the winning proposal, team biographies, news and information on how to donate to the project, is located here (https://sites.google.com/site/olpckenema/Home).

Tulane OLPC can be reached via Katie Robinette at vvkatievv@yahoo.com.