[OLPC India] Disappointed in the progress being made in India

Fri Oct 26 16:47:53 EDT 2007

Dear Ms. Uma Gupta,

We apologize if we have not been able to meet up with your and Ms. Gowri's
expectations. However, I wish to express that all our discussions/posts have
been centralized with the mission to spearhead OLPC initiatives in India.

You wrote:

> You may recall that my sister, Usha, (who is well-versed with NGOs in
> India with special emphasis on rural India )and I (Senior Advisor to the
> Provost at State University of New York) are interested in the laptop
> project in India. I contacted you earlier inquiring how to engage with you
> on this project.
>

We truly appreciate your interest and initiative to be a part of our
educational project. We did write back to you about the contributing areas
which I believe maps your interest with our needs, if we wish to reach the
Indian rural ecosystem, and revolutionize the education, which seems to be
the root-cause of all problems plaguing our society, and country
at-large.  It will be great if you could let us know about the areas of your
interest, where you wish to contribute in OLPC's educational mission.

> We are disappointed at the level of discussions and engagement taking
> place on the digest and elsewhere for volunteers like us who want to help
> move this initiative forward.
>

 Thanks for your feedback. We will be glad if you could also suggest us
ideas about ways to improve. We will try our best to implement them.

 Like Nicholas, we are interested in making a difference. We have no other
> hidden agendas.
>

I wish to express to you that OLPC requires community effort and support,
which is much more than we can muster unilaterally as OLPC
employees/associates. Our mission is for a humanitarian cause, and
we believe that anybody interested/associated with our project folllow the
same.

> When we first heard about this project, we were excited beyond measure. We
> have contacts in rural India and are aware of the challenges and issues in
> penetrating these markets.
>

Thanks for your expression of commitment. We will be glad to have volunteers
like you and Ms. Gowri, who could guide us and ensure that OLPC's vision is
well-implemented in rural India. But, before, we move to that level, we need
to build an umbrella comprising of various organizations, State Governments,
and foundations who can support an initiative to such a large scale here. We
have been working on it, and the progress seems good at the moment.

> We feel we are not getting direct answers to our queries as to how to
> truly engage rural communities in this important initiative.
>

Last September, we have launched our first pilot project in India at Khairat
School located near Navi Mumbai. We are still in a process to figure out
ways for the same, and will be glad to hear from you about the same. Our
idea is not to engage rural communities, but develop a mechanism by which
they can engage themselves, us, and other communities by the concept of
"sharing".  The "mesh" networking scheme has been one of the mechanisms to
achieve the concept of "sharing".

> While fonts and technical glitches and multiple language programs are
> important, your volunteers should first know about your penetration plans
> and how they can help.
>

First, our penetration plans depend upon our volunteers only. We are a
non-profit organization, and our "Constructionist Movement" depend more on
the initiative from our volunteers than from our side. We can develop
the platform which has been the prime focus of our "Content Team", whose
members have been trying their best in these regards. We will soon have an
online system to improve the coordination among the interested volunteers.

Second, after a recent trip to Khairat school, we realized certain
shortcomings, and have been working towards fulfiling them. The absence of
proper language support which could have been provided via a localized
activities/keyboard being one of them. All the technical
discussions/feedback that we have received from the list members have been
instrumental in our decision making process.

> Creating more digests or wikipedia is not the solution to keeping
> volunteers excited and engaged because talk is cheap!
>

Mailing lists, and Wikipedia happens to be the most consistent way towards
reaching our volunteers. Their views/feedback are highly essential for us,
and we value them with utmost regards. For volunteers interested in
"Content", we have "Content Jams" in place. We can work out something
similar for other areas too.

> So - bottom line - we want to help fulfill the vision of NN.
>

 I wish to inform you that Prof. Nicholas, all the founding members, and
employees of OLPC never treat OLPC as their vision to be fulfiled
by volunteers, but as the vision of volunteers themselves.

 We want action, not more discussions. Otherwise you will wear down the
> enthusiasm of your volunteers and they will look elsewhere.
>

It will be unfortunate if that happened. We wish to ask you about the ways
to maintain the enthusiasm of our volunteers.

We appreciate your support.

Best Regards,
Manu

Manusheel Gupta
Technical Consultant/Advisor
One Laptop Per Child Inc.
http://laptop.org

>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Arjun Sarwal < arjun at laptop.org>
> Date: Oct 25, 2007 8:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [OLPC India] India
> To: Usha Gowri < usha.gowri at gmail.com>
> Cc: manu at laptop.org, Carla Gomez Monroy < carla at laptop.org>, Nia Lewis <
> nia at laptop.org>, india at laptop.org, "Prof. Nicholas Negroponte" <nn at mit.edu>,
> Matt Keller < Matt.Keller at wfp.org>, olpc-india at laptop.org
>
> Dear Ms Gowri,
>
> We appreciate your concern with regard to people just looking for
> information as to when and how; to have to look through a lot of technical
> posts on the mailing list.
>
> We are in the process of developing a database and mechanisms on the wiki
> to co-ordinate efforts of organizations/people wanting to get involved with
> OLPC in India.
>
> You might also want to have a look at the 'Give Many' program (part of the
> G1G1) starting in November., which allows you to buy 100+/1000+/10000+
> laptops
> http://laptopfoundation.org/participate/givemany.shtml
>
>
> Also, I'd recommend all related queries to also be copied to
> olpc-india at laptop.org which is the email id for the OLPC- India
> foundation, which would be spearheading distribution efforts in India.
>
>
> Thank you for your interest.
>
> Regards,
> Arjun
>
>
>
>
>
>
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