Heather,<br><br>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:<br><br>XO's work best when there is a sufficient saturation in a given community. <br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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?<br><br>Seth<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Heather Richie <<a href="mailto:heather@wickrock.com">heather@wickrock.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I am confused as to whether or not it is possible to orchestrate the<br>
fundraising to bring these laptops into classrooms in the Mississippi<br>
Delta region of the U.S. The region (beginning with Philips Co, AR)<br>
is similar in poverty statistics and geographically isolated as<br>
developing nations. However, I can only find interest groups on the<br>
site. I'm looking to use our fundraising dollars to obtain laptops<br>
and implement educational programming in the Delta community. How do<br>
I do that?<br>
<br>
Thank you,<br>
<br>
Heather Richie<br>
<br>
<br>
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