Updates from Nepal's Pilot Schools

[Bryan Berry]

Martin, thanks for your interest. In general, we need funds for
"program activities" more than specific equipment. Program activities
includes salaries, office space, office equipment, Internet connection,
teacher training, programming workshops, Nepali wikimania events, etc.
Basically everything except physical infrastructure. It has been much
easier get funds for the XO's than program activities.

Why do we need to pay people? The core guys in the team like Rabi
Karmacharya, Saurav Dev Bhatta, and Ram Singh have families to support
and they aren't independently wealthy. They can't work 60 hours a week
on OLPC for free, and in fact they've been working at least that much
for the last 6 months since we formalized OLE Nepal. 

It took 4x as much time and effort for us to get funding for our program
activities than the XO's. There were periods where no one got paid and
believe me, some guys' wives were not happy :) I haven't taken any
salary yet but I don't have to financially support my parents, younger
siblings, etc.

Long story short, if you're interested contributing even a small amount,
we would prefer it be for general program activities. And we would much
appreciate it! Our online contribution site is currently offline, but if
you or anyone else is interested in contributing, I can give you the
details by private message.

Regards,

Bryan Berry
Systems Engineer
OLE Nepal
http://www.olenepal.org

On Sun, 2008-03-09 at 12:18 +0000, Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 09, 2008 at 05:29:50PM +0545, Bryan Berry wrote:
> > David, good idea.
> > 
> > there are only about 6 light bulbs at the Bishwamitra (smaller school)
> > and less than 5 at Bashuki the larger school.
> > 
> > I will have to ask Ram (our power guy) about what's available on the
> > local market. 
> > 
> > Regards to getting some for free, it would be great if you could put us
> > in contact w/ someone to donate them.
> 
> What's the USD cost of what would help in the short term?  If I/others
> can skip our daily $5 venti latte + muffin for a month, buy something
> online and put it in the post, I'm more than happy to do that.
> 
> Hopefully this could complement the work of people with corporate
> connections who could arrange a more regular source of donations.
> 
> Martin