[Grassroots-l] domestic educational programming

[Seth Woodworth]

Heather,

Hello, sorry it's taken me so long to respond to you.  Yes it would be
possible for you to raise money directly and get laptops, but it's not
necessarily a good idea.  Let me explain why:

XO's work best when there is a sufficient saturation in a given community.

First, every child must have their own laptop.  This must extend to a
classroom, a grade level, a school, and a school district.  Otherwise you
are splitting your efforts with children that have laptops and those that
don't.

Second, there needs to be enough support and saturation to create and
support infrastructure.  This means that the networking, repair, storage and
school server systems need to be created, people need to be trained and
materials need to be found.  The outlay to do all of this isn't really great
unless you have a certain undefined critical mass of machines.

So far as I can tell, the best way for OLPC test pilots (in preparation of a
full deployment) is to work through a local government or school district.
I think that this might be the best way for such a trial to get started.

There is some talk about a worldwide grassroots meetup here in Boston
towards the end of the summer, I don't know details yet, but would you be
interested in attending such an event?

Seth

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Heather Richie <heather at wickrock.com>
wrote:

> I am confused as to whether or not it is possible to orchestrate the
> fundraising to bring these laptops into classrooms in the Mississippi
> Delta region of the U.S. The region (beginning with Philips Co, AR)
> is similar in poverty statistics and geographically isolated as
> developing nations. However, I can only find interest groups on the
> site. I'm looking to use our fundraising dollars to obtain laptops
> and implement educational programming in the Delta community. How do
> I do that?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Heather Richie
>
>
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